SPEEAD-EAGLEISM. 



BY 



GEO. FEAl^CIS TKAIX, 

AUTHOR OF "young AMERICA ABROAD," " YOUNG AMERICA IN WALL 
STREET," ETC. ETC. 



NEW YORK : 

DERBY & JACKSON, 119 NASSAU STREET. 

1859. 






Entered according to Act of Congresi, in the year 1858, by 

DERBY & JACKSON, 

in the Clerk's Office ci a- Laited States District Court, for the Southern District of New York, 



American Unlvanfey 



W. H. TiNsoN, StereotypiT. Geo. Russell & Co., Printers. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Every Man his Own Autocrat, v 

Review of Young America from " Illustrated London News," 

Nov. 20, 1858, ^ 

Sketch of the Author from "New York Herald," 1856, . . xxv 

Speech at the Anniversary of American Independence, in 
Melbourne, Australia, July 4th, 1853— Massachusetts and 
Young America, 35 

Speech of Young America in Response to "The Ladies," at the 
American Banquet, in Melbourne, Australia, July 4th, 
1854, 44 

Speech in Response to "Young America" at the Banquet held 
in Melbourne, Australia, in Commemoration of the 4th of 
July, 1855, . . . ■ 52 

Speech at the Celebration of the 81st Anniversary of American 
Independence, at a CompHmentary Dinner given by the 
American Residents to the Officers of the U. S. War 
Frigate "Niagara," Liverpool, 4th July, 1857, . . .63 

Speech at a Banquet given by Messrs. James Baines & Co., 
Liverpool, England, in 1856, in Commemoration of dis- 
patching their Packet Ship " Oliver Lang" to New Zea- 
land, '75 

m 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAQH 

Speech at the Dinner given by General John S. Tyler at the 
Parker House, Boston, on the Anniversary of the Birthday 
of DanielWebster, January 18, 1858, . . . .89 

Speech in Response to the Sentiment " Young America and 
Old England," delivered at the Banquet given at the Lon- 
don Tavern by the American Residents, in honor of the 
82d Anniversary of American Independence, London, 
July 4, 1858, 102 

Opinions of the English Press, 129 

Correspondence between the Foreign Affairs (Jomraittee of 

Sheffield, England, and Mr. George F. Train of America, ] 34 

Remarks at Mansfield, Ohio, Xov. 1858, at a Public Meeting 
to meet the President and Directors, and agents of Foreign 
Capitalists connected with the Atlantic and Great Western 
Railway, 148 

Remarks at Cleveland, Ohio, December, 1858, to the Scholars 

of the High School, , . .166 



EYERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 



^' Young America Abroad," thrown off while run- 
ning about the world the other day, was written on 
shipboard, posted at the way stations, and found its 
way over the land, during the author's absence in 
Europe, under the editorship of the late Freeman 
Hunt, of the Merchant's Magazine. 

Messrs. Sampson, Low & Co., published the 
book in London, and English reviewers said a thou- 
sand kind words. Read the Times, the Morning 
Post, the Daily News, the Morning Advertiser, the 
Globe, and the Morning Chronicle. 

Look over the pages of the Economist, the Athe- 
naeum, the Literary Gazette, the Examiner, and the 
Saturday Review. 

The leading Journals and Reviews introduced it 
to the Clubs, the Libraries, and such letters of ac- 
quaintance command attention, for the hospitality 
of Englishmen is proverbial. 

The Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Russell, Lord 



VI EVERY MAN HIS OWN ATJTOCEAT. 

Burj, Sir Charles ISTapier, and Millard Gibson wrote 
me the kindest of notes. 

Sheridan Knowles, Delane, Grattan, Bancroft, 
Hawthorne, Lucas, Lajard, Dallas, Mackaj, did 
the same. 

Even dignified bankers certified that it was not a 
crime for a merchant to write a book. Ivennard, 
Milliken, Gilbart, Cargill, Bates, Larnock, Bell, 
Marshall, Elsej, Mozlej, McCalmont, Sturgis, Ha- 
milton, Morgan, all wrote notes of encouragement. 
'Tis pleasant to have the solid men of England wish 
you well. 

The book was a hit. Literary men, commercial 
men, financial men, political men, gave me a warm 
shake of the hand. 

iNoland quotes pages in his x\uthenticated His- 
tory of the Indian Empire. 

I attribute its success to the fact of my not being 
a literary man — not a poet — and to my having fol- 
lowed Washington's course about that cherry 
tree. 

"Young America in Wall Street," came out last 
year during the panic, and was abused and praised. 

Some liked it — others didn't. I observe that is 
the way with the world. Up, down — right, left — 
hot, cold — high, low — rich, poor — abuse a man, then 
praise him. Markets inflated, depressed — good, 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. "^11 

bad. Odd and even is natural law. Prosperity — 
then adversity. 

This rule applies to books. 

The public can commend, censure, or take no 
notice. I am equal to the former two ; but the 
third proposition touches the feelings of a sensitive 
man. 

The Evening Post said I had no brains to write a 
book in ten days — so I made this in five ! 

The New York Times called it — trash. 

The Herald — a work of decided merit. 

The Tribune made faces at it; and some hun- 
dred other journals did me the distinguished honor 
of giving it a lift or a kick, as the editors happened 
to feel, thereby showing a good deal of human na- 
ture in mankind. 

England said it was a Book of Telegrams. 

Kussia complimented me through Baron Bruno — 
and I am under warm obligations for receiving the 
courteous invitation from the Grand Duke Constan- 
tine to pass the winter at St. Petersburg. 

The Illustrated London News gives me a column 
and a half on Young America. The editor thinks 
I shall make no more books. Perhaps I should 
have followed his suggestion, had he not furnished 
me with a title for another : " Spread-Eagleism." 

Living in Australia, in England, in America, I 



VUl EVEEY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCEAT. 

have always remembered our national anniver- 
sary. 

Bennett published my first speech at Melbourne, 
in 1853 — afterwards my Letters from Asia, Africa, 
Europe, under Young America, where I anticipat- 
ed what has taken place in China, Japan, India — 
and in letters from Paris, Rome, and Vienna, to 
Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, in 1857, I foresha- 
dowed the commercial panic of last year. 

Spread-Eagleism is an Institution. 

Young America is a nation, and signifies pro- 
gress. 

Young America don't mean sucking babies alone 
— nor school-boys — nor fast young men. Of course 
not. It takes the country — the whole country, and 
nothing but the country. Every man, woman and 
child, old and young — every individual born since 
the nation's birth-day, is a Young American. It is 
Young America as an amiable rival to Old Eu- 
rope. Gambling, swearing, drinking, smoking, 
chewing, are not his traits of character. The real 
Young America does nothing of the kind. 

Young America is the vanguard of change — the 
coming age. His watchword is Keform. 

He loves Truth — Manhood — God, 

He despises Humbug — Exaggeration — Hypo- 
crisy. 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. IX 

Being true to himself, he can't be false to his 
neighbor. We cannot fasten an ism on him (ex- 
cept Spread-Eagleism). 

He likes all the States, and is of opinion that 
there are more great men in the country than ever 
before. Time and circumstances will bring them 
out. Circumstances make men — but man controls 
the circumstance. 

Great events are hovering over our destinies. 

The President foreshadows action. 

Young America will be wanted. 

The times are changing. 

These speeches have been the rounds. I rather 
like them, so I publish. 

The fact is, if a man don't have a good opinion of 
himself, who will care for him ? 

I know of no one better pleased v/ith number one 
than I. I have partially recovered from my consti- 
tutional diffidence and want of confidence. 

This is my theory : 

As there are so many young men in the world 
who don't like to go over and around it; who don't 
like to know the languages, make books, and be in 
the newspapers I say, as there are so many of 
these modest, unassuming men, who are not ambi- 
tious, I maintain there is no harm to mankind, no 

1* 



X EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

moral wrong committed, in having one superlative 
exception. 

Ever since I discovered that there were a few 
stock morals, stock jokes, stock ideas, stock heroes, 
stock compliments, stock slanders, stock creeds, 
stock conventionalities in the world — 

Ever since I learned that Caesar was less than 
six feet high instead of six thousand, I have applied 
the same measurement to other shining lights in 
barbarous eras, and find that no older fogies ever 
lived than those born before the age of printing. 

Our age is the age. 

Those men walked — we take the railway. Their 
dispatches went by horse power — ours by elec- 
tricity. 

The world is liberalizing. 

Even Pandemonium has got a new and revised 
constitution. 

The fires are not so hot as under the old Calvinis- 
tic regime. 

Young America observes that nature's features 
are regular. He likes joy, gladness, bright colors ; 
growling, ill-nature, scowls he detests. Flowers, 
clouds, land and water have a thousand hues ; the 
Creator did not dress this world in drab. 

Young America believes in a good hearty laugh. 
Laughter is the only distinguishable mark from the 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCEAT. XI 

brute — animals never smile. Only three cords 
draw down the face, but as many dozen take it up. 
Young America notices that his friends can never 
discover that he has any brains, but that his ene- 
mies by sneering, barking, depreciating, opposing 
him, prove it beyond a doubt. 

Observing this. Young America having already 
too many friends, does not give up all hopes of 
making a few enemies, by way of resistance, like 
water against the oars. 

By the by, did you never notice that a man always 
has plenty of friends when he does not particularly 
require their kind services ? 

Some think me too fast, others too slow ; some 
say, modulate your voice more — gesticulate less — 
don't get so excited. Each gives advice, but all 
cheer. 

Young America fears that we have too much 
theology and not enough of religion. Keep a board 
of bishops or a convention of clergymen waiting four 
hours for their dinner, and you will be astonished 
to see how that trifling delay will scatter their 
Christian precepts. 

Gibbon says, "The past is no more — the present 
a fleeting show — and the future dark and ob- 
scure." 

Young America don't agree with him. He 



Xll EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

owns the past, uses the present, and discounts the 
future. He dives deeper, swims longer, and comes 
lip drier. He thinks quicker, accomplishes more, 
and lives faster than any other party. 

Owing to the number of distinguished foreigners 
who are residents in our land, he has come to the 
conclusion that his country possesses some two- 
thirds the entire common sense ; three-fourths the 
active enterprise, and seven-eighths the beauty of 
the world ! Egypt gave Industry, Greece Liberty, 
Eome Law, France Art, England Commerce, 
leaving America to combine the whole and repre- 
sent the Progressive idea. 

Humanity was a puling babe in Asia — a school- 
boy in Europe — and has come to America to pass 
its manhood. 

Item — Young America believes that the pre- 
sent administration was necessary to cut off the 
chances of any man for the presidency over fifty 
years of age. The Young American ladies will 
never permit another bachelor to enter the "White 
House ! a voice from posterity has alarmed them 
by saying that the world would stop at the close of 
the century on that plan ! 

Orators intending to hand their speeches to the 
reporters at the end of their performances usually 
mark where the applause comes in. I have made 



EVEKY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCEAT. Xlll 

bold to follow their illustrious example. This is 
done in pure kindness to the general reader to as- 
sist him in finding the points. 

Some critics compliment me by calling these 
speeches " Gas " — thereby insinuating that they 
are both luminous and exhilarating ! 

The Turkish word " Bosb " used in England 
— when applied to my theories — signifies talent ! 

Young America having covered all nations in 
his travels, never feels flattered when any one says 
that he has been from Dan to Eeersheba — having 
stood on Dan and fired a stone over Beersheba. 
It occurs to him that it would be well to find some 
better simile for a man who has wandered some 
one hundred and seventy thousand miles. 

Marco Polo got to China and back. Kobin- 
son Crusoe was born in the imagination of Defoe. 
Peter Parley saw Paris. I have seen more than 
all those good people. 

Young America likes old England, and has ob- 
served that an Englishman thinks the more of you 
if you disagree with him — Young America's plat- 
form is in a word — 

First — ^The eternal Union of the States. Second 
— Everlasting peace and friendship with England. 
Third — Free trade in commerce, finance, and litera- 
ture. Fourth — ^The moral growth of spread-ea^lo 



XIV EVERY MAN HIS OWN ATTTOCEAT. 

ism, which is only a modern word for the Monroe 
doctrine. 

Item — Said Lord Jolm Eiissell to Mr. Hume, at 
a social dinner: "What do you consider the ob- 
ject of legislation V 

" The greatest good to the greatest number," re- 
sponded Mr. Hume. 

" What do you call the greatest number ?" con- 
tinued his lordship. 

'^Number one^ my lord," was the Commoner's 
prompt reply. 

This book was published on same principles. If 
the matter is too heavy, I propose to give something 
lighter in the work which I am preparing in Eng- 
land, entitled *' Young America on the Kailways 
of the World." 

Washington, January \sty 1859. 



EVEEY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XV 



"YOUNG AMEKICA." 

(From the Illustrated London News.) 

Under the titles of " Young America in Wall 
Street," and "Young America Abroad," Mr. George 
Francis Train, of Boston, Massachusetts, late of Mel- 
bourne, Australia, now of London and Liverpool — 
and perhaps of JSTishni-ITovogorod, and, for all we 
know, of Kamtschatka — has issued two volumes of 
somewhat remarkable character, racy and idiomatic, 
which none but an American of " clear grit " could 
have written. Young America, and, as far as we 
know, Old America — if under the latter designation 
are to be classed men of the mature ages of forty, 
fifty, and sixty — is somewhat more rash, reckless, im- 
pulsive, and, to use the true American epithet, " go- 
a-head-a-tive " than either Young or Old England j 
but Mr. Train in this respect does not claim or wish 
to be considered a fair representative of his coun- 
trymen. When the present or the future greatness 
and power of America are under consideration ; 
when it is a question of " licking all creation," be- 
ginning with Mexico, Nicaragua, and Spain, and 
ending with Great Britain, Mr. Train, crowing, 
cawing, or shrieking on behalf of the American 



XVI EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

eagle (a female bird, considering the eggs she lays 
on either side of the Kockj Mountains), can make 
as lusty a clamor as the most rabid stump-orator 
between Yermont and Arkansas. But, when it is 
a question of commercial enterprise and speculation, 
he is as sensible, as respectable, and as full of 
worldly wisdom, as a Kothschild, a Baring, or any 
greyheaded father of the Exchange. On questions 
of banking and currency, and the legitimate opera- 
tions of commerce, he enunciates his maxims like 
an old fogy who knows all the ins and outs of trade, 
and can pay sixty shillings in the pound. 'No fine- 
spun and high-sounding theories, come whence 
they will, and promulgated under any weight of 
authority whatsoever, can influence his sober judg- 
ment, or blind his eyes to the fact, which so many 
men who ought to know better absolutely refuse to 
see, that trade and gambling are two different and 
irreconcilable things, and that people who are over 
anxious to grow suddenly rich very often march on 
the highway to sudden, but not solitary, ruin. This 
is the characteristic of Mr. Train's first volume, 
published originally at New York in the heat of 
the panic of last winter, and since reproduced in 
England. If, in addition to his genius for statistics 
and his wonderful memory for facts, Mr. Train had 
literary ability and experience equal to the know- 



EVERT MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XVll 

ledge which he has gained by the acute and dili- 
gent study of men, he might rise to considerable 
distinction in literature as a writer on economic 
and commercial subjects. At present his style is 
not only redundant but harsh, and betrays in every 
page how much better he can think than write, and 
how much polish the diamond still requires before 
ordinary eyes can recognize it to be a diamond at 
all. " Young America Abroad " is a more attrac- 
tive volume than " Young America in "Wall Street," 
and the train — a very fast one — carries the reader 
by " express " all over and all around the world, 
till we toil and pant after him in vain, and shut the 
book for want of breath to be whirled along so 
rapidly. Familiar with his own country and his 
own countrymen, he would make it apparent that 
he is equally familiar with England, France, Ger- 
many, Italy, and Eussia ; that he knows all about 
Australia — its resources and its characteristics ; and 
that he is equally at home in matters relating to 
Java, Japan, and China. He is hand-in-glove with 
Kussian Grand Dukes; on friendly terms with 
Ambassadors and Plenipotentiaries ; knows Kings 
and Emperors, and, with Yankee independence — or, 
as we might say, " brass " — thinks an American 
citizen as good as, or better than, the best of them. 
His modesty never stands in his way or operates in 



XVlll EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

the slightest degree to his detriment ; and his im- 
pudence — if the word be not too harsh for a degree 
of conceit and self-assertion which is linked with a 
great deal of good feeling and good fellowship — 
never degenerates into repulsiveness. Mr. Train, 
in fact, may be looked upon as a not unfavorable 
representative of what the Americans have them- 
selves designated " spread-eagleism." At a " spread 
eagle" speech he has few superiors, and brings 
down by the vehemence of his manner and the 
evident sincerity of his convictions the applauses 
of auditors who in cooler moments would pronounce 
his speeches to be, in American parlance, gas, or, 
in vulgar English, bosh. To overawe the world 
and to patronize Great Britain, and if the said 
Great Britain do not behave herself before her lusty 
and saucy progeny, to "give her a licking" — such 
is the wish of " Young America." I^othing would 
please spread-eagleism so much as a general alli- 
ance of all the States of Europe against England, 
that America might have the opportunity of step- 
ping in to the rescue, and saving the little island 
from the assaults of all opponents. Evidently such 
a result of European politics would be entirely to 
the taste of Mr. Train. Hear what he savs : 



EVERT I^IAN HIS OWN AIJTOCEAT. XIX 



" Americans must spring to the rescue of the 
Saxon power. 

" England has done more for religious freedom 
and civil liberty than all the world beside. 

" I speak with the book, and know well what I 
say. America has followed England abroad and 
copied her at home. Englishmen should praise 
rather than censure our nationality ; for where is 
there a people so wrapt up in their national glory 
as the English ? 

" A little more reflection would convince an Eng- 
lishman that America must ever be the friend of 
England. Natural ties are stronger than artificial 
alliances. Americans are worthy of better treat- 
ment, of more respect, of broader sentiments, than 
Englishmen are disposed to give them. They insist 
upon judging us by the standard of the "almighty 
dollar." We have been treated badly by England. 

"The whole story can be written on a single 
page. 

" We commenced our career a shivering band of 
pilgrims, at Plymouth. 

" Our house was built upon a rock. 

" We worked — we toiled — we spun. God and 
the right went up with our morning and evening 



XX EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

prayer. By honesty and industry we built np a 
progressive colony. 

"A free church, a clear conscience, and just laws 
were the daily watchwords of the banished pio- 
neers. Amidst storm and tempest — the bear and 
the Indian — we increased in numbers and in wealth, 
and worked hard for that old mother land whose 
arbitrary laws had driven us from her shores. 

" We paid the taxes generation after generation. 
"We paid the taxes — ^for over a century and a half 
we paid them — and fought the battles of England. 
Years passed on. George III. wanted more money 
— we paid. More still — we paid that also. Year 
after year we paid away our hard-earned gains 
without complaint. Then tyrannical governors 
came among us. The Pilgrim band had become 
the germ of a great nation. More taxes were 
wanted for a Continental war. Out came the Stamp 
Act, the Boston Port Bill; — and overboard went 
the tea — up went the flag ; and then came Declara- 
tion of Independence — battles — victory ! 

"* There is Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker 
Hill,' said Webster to Hayne, ' and there they will 
remain forever, to prove to the civilized world the 
justness of our cause.' 

'' England admits that she was wrong, that Ame- 
rica was right. 



EVEKT MAN HIS OWN ATJTOCEAT. XXI 

"^Onward and upward, straight on,' we con- 
tinued our destiny. AYashington lived and died, 
bequeathing the purest name in history to a grate- 
ful nation. Adams, Madison, Jefferson followed, 
when, waging war with Bonaparte, England again 
insulted us. Our sailors were ourselves ; touch 
them you arouse us. The American citizen, on 
land or on the ocean, must and will be respected. 
Again we were victorious. 

" England admits that she was wrong, that Ame- 
rica was right. 

"Then came an age of peace. England sneers 
at our progress one day, and the next pats us on the 
shoulder, calling us a saucy little boy. English 
writers visit our land, but only return to exagger- 
ate our faults and forget our virtues. 

" ' Who reads an American book V said Sydney 
Smith. 

" Marryat came to the United States in the midst 
of the panic of 1837, to sneer at everything he 
"saw. 

" ' "Who fattens on the curse of slavery V said 
Dickens ; and then there was a distinguished lady- 
writer came Trollop-ing through the land. 

" The Ashburton Treaty was not a generation old 
when it was broken, but not by us. Our laws were 
infringed. Enlistment of soldiers in America for 



XXll EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

the Crimean war would have offended Russia, with 
wliom we have never had an ill-tempered diploma- 
tic note. We protested, but without effect. Back 
went the British minister. England sent regiments 
to Canada, and a war-fleet to the Bermudas. Cla- 
rendon stormed ; Marcy responded, with dignity 
and with eloquence. The American minister un- 
packed his trunks, and still remains in England. 

" England still admits that we were right, that 
she was wrong. 

" England should not forget, when shuddering 
over the atrocity of the Sepoys, that she herself, in 
days gone by, has offered rewards to the !North 
American savage for the ' scalps of Americans 
wherever they may be found.' Remember Chat- 
ham's eloquent denunciation. 

" I have merely run my eye along our national 
history to show that America has not been well 
treated by England. What are Americans, after 
all, but Englishmen left to themselves ? 

" With all this bitter remembrance we are wil- 
ling to forget and forgive. We are fond of the old 
land yet — with all her faults we love her still. 

"England will shortly need our help. The times 
are changing. Our moral sympathy alone may 
prevent the encroachment of Europe. India hangs 
by a thread — America can secure the Saxon flag 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXIU 

there for another hundred years. Americans are 
Americans at home — but they are Saxons abroad. 

" Let England's noble Queen come over to Ame- 
rica, and she shall have a welcome such as no his- 
torian has ever recorded. A sovereign people know 
how to welcome a sovereign Queen. 

" We never liked the Georges. Landor con- 
denses Thackeray's lectures into a thimble : 

" George the First was reckoned vile ; 
Viler, George the Second. 
And what mortal ever heard 
Any good of George the Third ? 
When from earth the Fourth ascended, 
God be praised the Georges ended !" 

" We never liked the Georges ; but there is not 
an American in the land that does not respect Yic- 
toria — the daughter, the wife, the mother, and the 
Queen — the noblest woman in our Fatherland ! 

" Let the Queen of England visit America ! 'Twill 
heal an age of irritation; and then one hundred 
thousand able-bodied soldiers will land in India and 
in China to introduce, with cannon, the locomotive, 
the steamboat, and all the implements of the Sax- 
on's power to the Asiatic race. 



XXIV EVEEY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

Englishmen are very much obliged for the good 
feeling which dictates the offer of men from Ame- 
rica to help them to reconquer India ; but English- 
men have made up their minds to do without it. 
As yet, at all events, they can fight their own bat- 
tles, and want no more assistance in India than 
Brother Jonathan does in Mexico. 

We doubt whether we shall hear much more of 
Mr. Train as a maker of books. He has, we be- 
lieve, a better business to attend to, and one for 
which nature has more eminently qualified him. 
As a maker of speeches, and a steady, active man 
of business, long may he flourish ! 



EVERT MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXV 

YOUXG AMERICA IN AUSTRALIA. 

(From the New York Herald, 1S56.) 
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. 

We have selected the subject of our present 
sketch, as a most creditable representative of the 
Young American merchant — of that Young Ame- 
rica which pours its energies through all tlie chan- 
nels of commerce in all quarters of the globe — 
which, at home or abroad, upholds the high cha- 
racter of its country — which is ready to plant 
itself wherever great achievements await it, 
whether amid the firs of the northwest, or on the 
quays of the seaboard ; now ploughing the Arctic 
ices or searching for new points of development 
under the equator ; now carrying our flag and in- 
stitutions, to erect them on the yellow rocks of 
California : or, as if not finding room enough within 
our own boundless domain, aiding to establish a 
new port, build a new city and create a new com- 
merce on the golden soil of Australia. 

George F. Train was the oldest son of Oliver 
Train, who, for many years prior to his decease, 
was a successful merchant in the city of Boston, 
where his son George was born. In the year 1831, 
or '32, Oliver Train removed, with his family, con- 



XXVI EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

sisting of bis wife and three children, from Boston 
to the city of New Orleans. 

During the first year of his residence at the 
South, the yellow fever prevailed in its most aggra- 
vated form, and among its victims the entire family 
of Oliver Train was numbered, with the isolated 
exception of the subject of this notice. After Mr. 
Train had buried the whole of his family but 
George, and a short time before his own death, in 
the hope of saving his only remaining child from a 
similar fate, he committed him to the care of a cap- 
tain of a sailing vessel bound to Boston from the 
port of New Orleans, to be restored to the surviving 
relatives of his deceased mother. Thus, at the 
tender age of four years, bereft of father, mother, 
brother and sister, this friendless child in a strange 
land commenced the voyage of life alone. Though 
too young, perhaps, to be much influenced in cha- 
racter by the unpropitious and forlorn circum- 
stances in which his career began, yet his subse- 
sequent life, successful in an eminent degree, and 
unmindful of difficulties, which, however formid- 
able to others, serve but to stimulate him to con- 
quer them, seems to give evidence that the severe 
training of his childhood had given him strength, 
hardihood and resolution. 

Arriving in safety at the city of his birth, after a 



EVERT MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXVU 

protracted voyage of many weeks, he was com- 
mitted to the care of his grandmother on the ma- 
ternal side, who then resided and still resides at 
Waltham, Massachusetts, and by whom he was 
reared with a tenderness and watchfulness that 
could only be looked for from the mother that gave 
him birth. This venerable woman, who still sur- 
vives to witness the success of her proteg^, gave 
him the advantages of all the education which at 
that day was to be acquired in a New England 
town. Kemaining with his grandmother until 
fifteen years of age, he grew restless under the 
state of dependency he felt himself to be in, and 
determined thenceforth to achieve his own success. 
He went to Cambridgeport, in his native State, 
where he soon obtained a situation as clerk. There 
he remained nearly two years, when, concluding 
that Cambridgeport did not present a sufiicient 
field of enterprise for his growing aspirations, he 
set out for Boston. His desire. was soon gratified 
in obtaining a clerkship in the counting-house of 
Enoch Train & Co., the eminent shipping house of 
Boston. The position he rapidly attained there is 
best told by the fact that at the age of twenty-one 
he was sent by Col. Train to Liverpool to take 
charge of his branch house in that city, and which 



XXVI 11 EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

Young Train managed with consummate ability for 
a year. On his return, he assumed his old position 
in the Boston house, and at the age of twenty-three 
was assigned an interest in its business, where he 
remained till February, 1853. 

In October, 1851, Mr. Train was married, at the 
West, to tlie eldest dalighter of Col. George T. M. 
Davis, and in February, 1853, they embarked for 
Melbourne, Australia — he with the view of estab- 
lishing the house of Caldwell, Train & Co. In 
1854, he purchased the interest of Mr. Caldwell, 
and the firm was changed to that of George F. 
Train & Co. 

Of the many American houses that were estab- 
lished in Melbourne during the gold fever of 1853, 
that of Georo^e F. Train & Co. was marked with 
distinguished success. 

When the celebrated White Star Line of clipper 
ships was established by Messrs. Pilkington & Wil- 
son, of Liverpool, they selected the house of George 
F. Train & Co. as their agents at Melbourne, and 
to which their vessels are still consgned. The 
commercial connections of this house embrace 
many of the most eminent names throughout 
Europe. Its success may be said to have been 
almost without a parallel, especially when it is 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXIX 

remembered that its founder and principal man- 
ager is but just entering on his twenty-sixth 
year.* 

Undoubtedly, Mr. Train is largely indebted for 
his success to the admirable mercantile education 
he received in the house of his uncle. The Boston 
Post, in copying an article from the Melbourne 
Age, on " American Enterprise," introduced it 
with the following remarks : 

" It is with pride and pleasure we copy the fol- 
lowing evidence of the intelligent enterprise and 
merited success of a young Boston merchant on 
the other side of the world. Mr. Train is a gradu- 
ate of the large and honorably distinguished house 
of Train & Co., a house whose senior partner, 
Enoch Train, Esq., has done as much to advance 
the business of Boston, improve her marine archi- 
tecture, and develop all those elements of a high 
and useful mercantile character, as any citizen 
whose name was ever recorded in a Boston direc- 
tory. Liberal, sagacious, decisive ; those who have 
received their business education in his counting- 
house have had a high example before them, and 

* Mr. Train left Australia in 1855, and the firm of G. F. T. & 
Co. was dissolved by limitation in 185*7. Should any of his old 
correspondents visit him in London they will receive a most cor- 
dial welcome. G. F. T. 



XXX EVERT MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

those who have been capable of appreciating it and 
wise enough to follow it like the gentleman who 
now excites the commendation of the people of 
another nation, have reaped rewards but rarely at- 
tained." 

Notwithstanding the important interests upon his 
hands and his devotion to business, Mr. Train, by 
some miracle of industry, has found time for exten- 
sive reading and scholastic attainment, and perfect- 
ed his pen in an easy and graceful style, and speak- 
ing as if elocution had been one of the chief objects 
of his study. To these qualities we may add the 
more endearing ones of strict integrity, great moral 
worth, and habits of life without a blemish. 
Throughout the colony, and amongst all classes, he is 
a universal favorite. He was urged by the mining 
interest to represent them in the colonial Legisla- 
ture, but his consent could not be obtained. The 
unanimity with which this nomination was tendered 
him is the best evidence of the respect and confi- 
dence entertained for him by the great interest of 
the colony. On the occasion of his recent depart- 
ure from Melbourne, the prominent merchants and 
citizens of that place gave him the testimonial of a 
public dinner, and the speeches then delivered ex- 
liibited their high appreciation of his qualities and 
bearing as a merchant and a man, and of his inva- 



EVERT MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXXI 

luable services in advancing the best interests of the 
colony. 

After a residence of three years in the island-con- 
tinent of the South, during which brief time he has 
accomplislied so much, Mr. Train resolved to visit 
his native land. In the first of a series of letters to 
the New York Herald, now in progress, he says : 

" I am now bound to Batavia, and after taking a 
look at the island of Java, shall proceed to Singa- 
pore, en route for China and Manila, and I shall try 
and give you a page or two from Hong Kong, Can- 
ton, Shanghai, and, if possible, from Japan ; after 
which I shall visit Penang, Madras, Calcutta, and, 
if time permit, pass through the interior of Bengal 
to Bombay ; then down to Ceylon, and on to Aden, 
np the Ked Sea to Suez, over the desert to Cairo 
and Alexandria ; thence to Constantinople, Sebas- 
topol and the Black Sea ports, returning by the 
way of the ]N'orth of Europe, France and England 
to New York, which, with the ground I have 
already been over, ought to make me something of 
a traveller. I am taking the tour purely for infor- 
mation, and to get a little practical illustration of 
my theoretical reading." 

His subsequent letters from Java and Malacca are 
filled with graphic descriptions, and important com- 
mercial and statistical information, not elsewhere 



XXXll EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCKAT. 

to be obtained. We hope, when Mr. Train reaches 
this country, that, notwithstanding the success 
which has crowned his efforts abroad, he will con- 
clude no longer to expatriate himself. Though 
proud of such men to represent us abroad, we can- 
not afford to lose their services at home. 

We have spoken of Mr. Train as an exalted type 
of that vigor, energy, and daring enterprise that 
characterize our Young America. We cannot do 
better than, in closing this article, to allow him to 
give his own ideas upon this subject, by extracting 
a portion of his speech at Melbourne, on the Fourth 
of July last, in response to a toast given to " G. F. 
Train and Young America." After tracing the de- 
scent of Young America for a thousand years, in a 
condensed, but eloquent review, he exclaims : 

" But if the retrospective view has dazzled us, 
how much more astonishing is the present. When 
our thirteen little States are rolling on towards 
forty living republics, bound together as one nation; 
when our three millions have grown to thirty, and 
' driven by the hand of God,' to quote De Tocque- 
ville, ' are peopling the western wilderness at the 
average rate of seventeen miles per annum.' 
When our Lilliputian commerce has whitened every 
sea, and our mother tongue has worked its way into 
every land, and when our influence and our pro- 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. XXXlll 

gress — like the ripple in the mid ocean — reaches 
from shore to shore. 

" Startle not, my friends, at the lightning pace of 
the pilgrim's steed. He is sure to win the race — 
naught stops him in his destiny — when danger lurks 
in his pathway, he turns high his head and snorts a 
proud defiance at the precipice that would have 

ruined him, and plunges on to victory 

England and America are partners, not rivals. The 
younger nation is the junior, who manages the west- 
ern branch of the old concern ; youth gives activity, 
and hence the young man opens his letters before 
breakfast, on the steps of the post-office, whilst the 
old gentleman prefers breaking the seal in dressing- 
gown and slippers after dinner. Young America 
showed the same feelings of independence in estab- 
lishing a house of his own, that every young man 
experiences who leaves the old house to earn an 
honest livelihood by his own exertions. 

"In this instance, however, the connection with 
the old concern is of more value than that with the 
balance of the world. The revolution was merely 
an animated conversation, where shot and cannon 
were introduced to give emphasis to the debate, 
and when the disputed ' points ' were settled, old 
England rose with renewed vigor, in Young Ame- 
rica. The sources of discord soon began to dry, and 
2* 



XXXIV E\TERY MAN HIS OWN AUTOCRAT. 

now, as the flower turns to the sun, the needle to 
the magnet, the child to its mother, as the twin 
brothers of Slam receive each the same emotions, 
so are we bound by speaking the same language, 
and worshipping the same God, to remember Eng- 
land, the proud old mother of our race, 

" And join the stars and stripes and cross in one fraternal band, 
Till Anglo-Saxon faith and laws illumine every land." 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 



[Arriving in Melbourne in May, 1853, and seeing American 
ships and American merchants hourly entering the port, I imme- 
diately took measures to introduce our countrymen to the Austra- 
lians, by inviting their leading men to a banquet on the 4th of July, 
in commemoration of the anniversary of American Independence. 

Nothing could have created a greater storm of political feeling. 

The Argus became exceedingly wroth, and asked what France 
would say if a party of Englishmen gave a dinner in Paris in honor 
of the Battle of Waterloo, and invited the Emperor, as the Ameri- 
can strangers were about to do, to glorify themselves over our de- 
feat, by inviting the Governor of the Colony and his cabinet. 

The Herald, with better sense, took us by the hand. I wrote a 
letter to say, that this was our custom everywhere, that Geo. Pea- 
body, Esq., introduced it into London in 1851, the Duke of Wel- 
lington being his guest on the occasion. I also told them that the 
St. George, St. Patrick, St. Andrew, and St. Nicholas Societies — 
Americans and Englishmen together, met every year in New York, 
and that the flags of both nations were always united over the 
social board. 

The dinner came off, and in less than three years the leading men 
of Melbourne showed their good feeling in tendering me a public 
banquet on ray departure from the colony.] 

After the usual national "toasts had been 
duly honored, the chair called out Young 
America by giving " Massachusetts, '^ 



3 6 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Mr. George Francis Train responded to 
the toast. He said — 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Most 
cheerfully do I rise to reply to the sentiment 
which every Massachusetts man must feel a 
thrill of pleasure in responding to ; and al- 
though my proper place, it would seem to 
me, would be to hide myself in the shadow 
of the many eloquent gentlemen present, who 
have the happy faculty of using the Anglo- 
Saxon tongue in a manner that cannot fail to 
interest you, I must beg permission to say 
a word in telling you how much I appreciate 
the courtesy. Massachusetts is my native 
place, and I assure you I feel proud in repre- 
senting her this evening, I was born beneath 
the Shade of Faneuil Hall. My schoolboy 
days were passed among her forest hills, and 
my mercantile experience I obtained amid 
the shipping of her capital. 

I love her as my natural mother, and, not- 
withstanding my being so many leagues away, 
I cannot easily forget her sacred memory. 
But she needs no eulogy from me. In the 
magic words of her immortal statesman, 
" There is Lexington and Concord, and Bun- 
ker Hill, and there will they remain forever.'^ 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 37 

The prolific land that has given birth to a 
Franklin, an Allston, and a Story, reads in 
their works her beautiful history. Her 
statesmen — her historians — her painters and 
her orators — her merchants and her me- 
chanics, rank high in that which makes men 
great. Look at her merchant marine — note 
the magnificent fleet of clipper ships she has 
launched within a few short years, and ob- 
serve the progress in their modelling ; you 
have them within a very short period all the 
way from a coal hulk to a pilot yacht. Not 
satisfied with having built the fastest ship, 
McKay is now about completing the largest 
clipper in the world. A ship 330 feet long, 
53 feet breadth — a three decker, with four 
masts, and to register 4,000 tons. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Need I tell you, Mr. Chairman, she is to be 
called the Young America ? (Cheers.) This 
is the age of progress, and surprised we can- 
not be at anything that may happen. If any 
man of good sense should tell me that he an- 
ticipated taking a voyage around the world, 
with only a single shirt to his back, and one 
collar in his hat, in some patent air-navigat- 
ing balloon, or that England and America 



38 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

were soon to he made Siamese Twins, hy means 
of a submarine magnetic wire, or that some 
promising son had discovered a patent for 
living without eating, or walking while sit- 
ting in his chair, or a thousand and one in- 
credible things, I should want to reflect a 
moment before I began to laugh. America 
has been making rapid strides in improve- 
ment ; her land is crossed with railroads, 
lined with electric wire — 

" The steed called lightning, say the Fates, 
"Was owned in the United States — 
'Twas Franklin's hand that caught the horse, 
'Twas harnessed by Professor Morse." 

(Loud applause.) 

By the last mail I note that our countrymen 
are about connecting the Atlantic with the 
Pacific Ocean by one continuous chain of 
iron, and projects too great for belief are be- 
ing consummated. Inventions too wonderful 
to be credited, are daily being journalized. 
Her canvas whitens every sea, and her sons 
are scattered broadcast throughout all nations. 
We have been often laughed at for our na- 
tional pride, but I for one am prouder than 
ever for every new discovery that she makes 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 39 

to promote civilization and increase the good 
will of men. (Cheers.) 

" We are a proud people, and we are proud of right ; 
We boast, and well we may. Time, in his flight, 
Has never seen a nation spread in power, 
As ours has widened since its natal hour ; 
Since first our fathers sought this western strand, 
And one frail vessel bore the little band. 
Now leagues on leagues the heaving ocean's roar, 
Goes bursting on our broad Atlantic shore. 
Where commerce dwells ; from thence to every sea, 
Is borne the glorious banner of the free. 
Thence far — far westward — may our eagle fly, 
Beneath the arching of his native sky ; 
And though a nestling, by the ocean's foam. 
Beyond the Rocky Mountains find a home." 

(Loud cheers.) 

Let US leave the toast and jump on board 
a Collins steamship, and shake hands with 
our relations on Albion's shore. Observe 
the good feeling that exists between us. 

And my prayer shall ever be that the 
same cordial spirit between the two great 
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, shall con- 
tinue and increase under the flag of our own 
happy land and the strong arm of England, 
till the last wave breaks on the shore of eter- 
nity. (Prolonged cheering.) May no bar- 
rier spring up to mar the happiness of either. 



40 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

And why should they not ever be on the 
best of terms — the gifted mother and the 
progressive child ? Compare their histories, 
and in many features you can but detect a 
strong family resemblance. In the one you 
have an acknowledged republic — and in the 
other, the great Talleyrand tells us you have 
the republic in disguise — each free, and both 
with a broad and liberal government. Real- 
ly, they are not so much unlike. Go back 
to earlier days. While we were stirred by 
the burning eloquence of Patrick Henry, and 
his compatriots, she was listening to the im- 
mortal Burke and the men of his day. If 
the same domestic fireside has given England 
two premiers, so has the old Bay State fur- 
nished America with two Presidents from 
the same family, for while she may speak of 
the eloquent Chatham and the wondrous boy 
premier, William Pitt, we can but remember 
the elder Adams and his son, "the old man 
eloquent." 

One from each land died in full honors 
while in the councils of their respective na- 
tions. Look at England's stupendous monu- 
ments of genius. Go and see that leviathan 
piece of mechanism of Stephenson, the tubu- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 41 

lar bridge ; walk through the Thames tunnel, 
and stop a moment at the Crystal Palace, 
and you will find wonders artificial, as great 
in magnitude as in Niagara Falls and the 
Mammoth Cave in America you have them 
natural. Go with me to Chatsworth, the 
most beautiful place in all Europe, and here 
the princely owner whom I was honored by 
meeting on the banks of Menai, will tell you 
of what Mr. Paxton has done. Industry and 
enterprise is England's excelsior motto as 
well as ours. We have taken many a leaf 
from her book, and have oftentimes rested 
beneath her wide-spreading branches of 
gigantic oak, which cover one hundred and 
fifty millions of her people ; — even now we 
have to see what takes place in the world 
through England. 

Read that mammoth engine of the press, 
that bears the same relation to England that 
the New York Herald does to America, the 
London Times, and you will see a daily his- 
tory of the world. (Applause.) But enough 
of the land of my nativity, where I have 
spent so many gala-days. Enough of Eng- 
land, where, in that great commercial port, 
Liverpool, I first learned the true meaning 



42 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

of hospitality. A twelvemonth among her 
merchants, I can judge something of their 
dispositions ; for before I had been there as 
many weeks, they made me feel as much at 
home as though I had been with them as ma- 
ny years. I say enough of the land where 
I was born and the land where I sojourned 
so short a time ; but a word for the land of 
my adoption — Australia ! my new home ! 
May its precious treasure shed a peaceful 
light throughout the social circle, and de- 
velop a gold field of happiness to all who 
have been drawn beneath its magnet. Aus- 
tralia ! the brightest star in the whole British 
galaxy. May it continue to sliine over 
the pathway of the weary emigrant, until 
he has found the haven for which he has 
so long sought. (Applause.) 

Australia ! the great El Dorado of the 
Southern Ocean, may the time be not far 
distant when we shall see the good effects of 
her yellow harvest in building a railroad to 
Sydney, and to Adelaide, and to every other 
commercial town in the colony with a mag- 
netic telegraph for a companion. May this 
wonderful towii continue to grow and widen, 
until it has eaten up all the surrounding vil- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 43 

lages ; and may the facilities for business 
keep pace with the wants of her people, and 
its emancipation is a subject for rejoicing. — 
(Applause.) In the language of the classic 
poet of Surrey, I know j^ou will let me join 
you in remembering the event : 

*' Rejoice, O land — our goldea land ? 

Be glad our glorious clime ! 
We are quit of the curse of the convict band. 

We are free from the taint of crime ; 
Rejoice and be glad, for the God of all grace 

Has heard our prayers at length. 
And bids Australia run her new race — 

As the sun going forth in liis strength. 
No more shall the festei-ing prison bark 

Bring hither its cargo of strife ; 
But every ship — as the olden ark, 

Shall pour forth love and life. 
No longer guilt, all greedy for gold, 

Shall prosper and range without fear, 
But virtue and freedom shall live to grow old 

In blessed abundance — here ! 
Old England's wisest, purest and best. 

Shall flock to this happier shore, 
And the good of the world, from the east to the 
west. 

Shall be ours for evermore." (Cheering.) 

Mr. Chairman, you must pardon me for 
detaining you so long, while you permit me 
to occupy another moment of your time, in 
giving a sentiment, which I know you will join 



44 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

me in : '' The Anglo-Saxon race throughout 
the world — may they henceforth know no 
rivalry but to advance the welfare of man- 
kind." (Loud applause.) 



Young America's response at a public banquet, given hy the 
Americans, at Melbourne^ Australia, July 4ih, 1854, to 
the sentiment — " The Ladies — God bless them.^^ 

The Ladies — Grod bless them — deserve all 
the cheers which you have done yourselves 
honor by giving them. They are worthy of 
the kindest of words, the loudest of hurrahs — 
the very name of woman covers all that 
makes life dear ; you give her last, but she is 
ever first — in peace, in war — everywhere and 
always, she is the beacon light that guides us. 

God made the world, but the world would 
have been a blank had he not created woman 
to be the companion of man. 

I have a theory, that when woman dies 
the rib goes back to man from whom it 
was borrowed, and when man is no more he 
must suffer for the sins of both. (Laughter.) 

You could not, Mr. Chairman, have given 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 45 

me a sentiment more congenial to my feel- 
ings. No man hears the toast without having 
the happiest associations of his life opened 
afresh. 

" Oh ■woman ! dear woman ! whose form and whose soul 
Are the light and the life of each spell we pursue — 

"Whether sunn'd in the tropics, or chill'd at the pole, 
If woman be there, there is happiness too." 

''Sweethearts and wives" bring out a 
" Health to all good lassies," and when toast- 
ing the Queen the enthusiasm is intense, be- 
cause she is a woman, the pride of her sex. 
(Cheers.) 

How absurd is it to argue for or against a 
superiority of either sex — nature's laws forbid 
such nonsense — man has his sphere — woman 
hers, and when you toast the Pilgrim Fathers 
you should not forget the Pilgrim Mothers. 
(Laughter and applause.) 

The mother of Washington is never forgot- 
ten when we remember the son. 

Take the dew from the blossom — the bud 
from the bee, and both perish, so woman 
lives for man, and for man alone. 

The needle and the magnet are not more 
constant in their reciprocal attractions than a 
good woman and virtuous man — you cannot 



46 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

separate them. As sunshine and rain make 
glad the face of nature, so woman's smile 
chastens the life of man. 

Mankind means womankind also, and when 
we toast the ladies we mean woman, the wife, 
the mother, the daughter, the sister of man. 

The celestial spark of woman's love, dim- 
med in prosperity, blazes with intensity in 
adversity. 

The forest tree, shattered by the thunder- 
bolt, finds the ivy clinging the closer to its 
prostrate trunk. So woman's love shines the 
brightest when man bows before the •affec- 
tions of life. (Applause.) 

"There is in life no blessing like woman's affection : 
It soothes, it hallows, elevates, subdues, 
And bringeth down to earth its native heaven. 
It sits beside the cradle patient hours, 
Whose sole contentment is to watch and love ; 
It bendeth o'er the death-bed, and conceals 
Its own despair with words of faith and hope, 
Life has naught else that may supply its place : 
Void is ambition — cold is vanity, 
And wealth an empty glitter without woman's love." 

Men often receive credit for that which be- 
longs to women. 

First impressions come from the mother — 
as an overhanging rock wilts the flower, so 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 47 

may a mother's frown cast a shade upon the 
child forever. Place a straw across the rivu- 
let and how crooked is the river! Scar the 
sapling, you gnarl the oak. 

Virtues and vices are stereotyped during 
the tender days of youth. Nature prints 
everything, and never repeats. The mother 
of Bacon stamped her learning on the son — 
Hume, Sheridan, Goethe, all speak of their 
mothers' character as forming their own. 

Erskine's mother advised the law ; and the 
mothers of Napoleon, the poet Thomson, 
Scott, and Boerhaave, all marked their genius 
on their sons. Randolph beautifully refers 
to his mother's teaching him the prayer 
'' Our Father." 

I know not a mother's love — a sister's af- 
fection. In another land, in a southern city, 
I was left motherless and sisterless — a waif 
upon life's stormy billows. But there still 
lives, in a far off country, a Christian woman 
(my mother's mother), who engraved impres- 
sions on memory's tablet that time and cir- 
cumstance can never efface. 

" The mothers of France make the men/^ 
said Bonaparte. 

If in the seraglios of the East woman is de- 



48 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

based, in the homes of the West she is exalt- 
ed. Ill Turkey, men compliment their wo- 
men by uncovering their feet ; in America, 
by taking off their hats. 

As the sun warms the flowers of the field, 
so woman's sunshine makes glad the home of 
man. Grod made the sexes for a divine pur- 
pose. " Let there be light" — and that light 
was woman. 

"l^ot she witli traitorous kiss her Saviour stung, 
N"ot she denied him with unholy tongue ; 
She, wlien apostles shrunk, could danger hrave, 
First at the cross and earliest at the grave." 

When man curses the vile thing that he 
passes with a shudder in the street, he should 
not forget that he caused all her squalor and 
her wretchedness. 

If a depraved woman is worse than a de- 
praved man, so is a noble woman more exalt- 
ed than a noble man. 

I never hear women spoken of lightly 
when the wine goes round, that I do not im- 
pulsively stop the sweeping assertion with 
''Have you a mother, a sister, a wife, a 
daughter ?" The flushed faces of the cow- 
ardly trifler of a woman's virtue shows that 
the shaft went home. 'Tis the only way to 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 49 

check the tongue from running wild over the 
wine cup. 

" 'Tis said of woman, maid or wife, 
That boner is a woman's life." (Applause.) 

Woman's impressions are lasting, while 
ours are fleeting. Instinctively woman ar- 
rives at conclusions which man gains by 
reflection. 

What woman seeks is manhood — what man 
cherishes is womanhood. 

The wife who controls her husband, except 
by love, debases him, and cannot respect him. 
The husband who would trample upon the 
finer feelings of the wife, wrongs her and 
lowers himself. 

This likening women to angels is absurd ; 
a woman in a drawing-room with wings would 
create a decided sensation. (Laughter). 

What man wants is a woman (laughter) 
who will be to him the best of wives. (Cheers). 

" Woman ! blest partner of our joys and woes, 
Even in the darkest hour of earthly ill. 
Untarnished yet thy fond affection glows. 

Throbs with each pulse, and beats with every thrill 
When sorrow rends the heart, when feverish pain 
Wrings the hot drops of anguish from the brow, 
To soothe the soul, to cool the burning brain. 
Oh I who so welcome, and so prompt as thou ?" 
3 



50 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

To be sure, Eve introduced the first extra- 
vagance in dress, but Adam was not long in 
following suit. Men are as absurd in their 
fashions as women. There is one thing I am 
convinced of — husbands do not give their 
wives sufficient spending money. (Laughter.) 

Be more liberal, so that when misfortune 
comes the good wife will bring out her stock- 
ing full of savings. I have never observed 
the working of this theory, but have read of 
it in novels. Some of you who have been 
making so much money lately better try it. 
(Laughter.) 

The poet Clarke beautifully said : 

" Then twilight let her curtain down, 
And pinned it with a star," 

He should have said, '' with a woman. '^ 

Man needs woman's refining care to keep 
him from becoming bachelorized. What is 
there so melancholy as to see a confirmed old 
bachelor or attenuated old maid ? (Laughter.) 

I know not which appears the most miser- 
able. 

The world would perish, under their plan, 
during the present century. 

The maid may have an excuse — but there 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 51 

is none for the bachelor. Early disappoint- 
ments, causing single wretchedness (not bless- 
edness), of course are far different from those 
who deliberately enter on the half-scissor 
plan. 

A counting-house friend of mine once repeat- 
ed this arithmetical sentiment when respond- 
ing to '' the Ladies :" 

" May they add virtue to beauty, subtract 
envy from friendship, multiply amiable ac- 
complishments by sweetness of temper, divide 
time by kind words and happy faces, and re- 
duce slander to the lowest denomination.'' 
(Applause.) 

Talk about gossips ! Our sex love to gos- 
sip as well as theirs ; and if a woman-gossip 
is a pitiful sight, what will you say of the 
mall-gossip ? When I see such, I think the 
greatest fool in the world is a woman — ex- 
cept a man ! (Laughter.) 

You never compliment a woman by calling 
her a Yenus ; on the contrary, you insult her. 
Yenus was the goddess of Love, not of Yirtue. 

I love nature whenever and wherever 
clothed in beauty. I worship the rising moon, 
the setting sun — a beautiful landscape, or a 
white-capped sea — a lovely flower, a pretty 



52 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

bird, a noble animal — but above all, a beau- 
tiful woman ! 

" Let patriots live in story — 

Too often tliey die in vain. 
Let conquerors fight for glory — 

Too dearly the meed they gain. 
Give kingdoms to tliem who choose 'em ; 

The vi^orld can otFer me 
No throne hke beauty's bosom, 

No freedom like serving thee, 
Oh, woman ! 

No pleasure like serving thee !" 

The ladies — again, God bless them! 

We admire them for their graces, we 
adore them for their virtues, we love them 
because — we cannot help it. (Laughter and 
cheers). 



(From the New York Journal of Commerce.) 

Speech delivered at Melbourne, Australia, at the National 
Dinner of the American Citizens, July ith, 1855. 

Mr. Chase proposed '' George F. Train, 
Esq., and Young America." 

Mr. Train replied as follows. His speech 
requires no comment ; it was unquestionably 
the speech of the evening : 

You have given me, Mr. Chairman, a glori- 
ous theme, but you overrate my ability if you 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 53 

expect me to do it justice. The sentiment 
demands an abler champion — but your warm 
and hearty call gives me confidence, and all 
that you have said, I pass to the credit of 
the toast, reserving nothing but your good- 
will for the speaker. Your enthusiasm is 
well-timed, gentlemen, for Young America is 
worthy of your cheers, and the association of 
my name with the response, commands my 
deepest obligations. 'Tis a proud thing for 
the native-born of any land to speak of his 
country in the presence of his countrymen, 
and that pleasant duty is mine to-night. 
Had I not made pleasure before business the 
exception to the rule, I should have been ab- 
sent to-day ; but to tell the truth, I would 
not, I could not go away. On tvv^o occasions 
like the present we have rejoiced together, 
and the temptation was too strong not to be 
with you at a third, more especially as I am 
about to visit my native country, where I 
hope to meet your at some future day, 

" Round tlie hearth-stone of home in the land of our birth, 
The hohest spot on the face of the earth. 
Dear country ! my thoughts are as constant to thee, 
As the steel to the star, or the stream to the sea — 
Then, hurrah for the future so buoyant and bright, 
And be happy— if never again, boys, to-night !"— (Cheers.) 



5 4 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Once more are we met to honor this day 
of all the year — and 'tis well we meet in 
happy fellowship, for it is our own — the gala- 
day that belongs to no one else ! Once 
more we bow before the reaper, Time, to 
join hand and hearts and voices in gratitude 
to Him who doeth all things well, that the 
Constitution of our Fatherland is strong and 
steadfast as the granite mountains that over- 
look my native city ! Young America may 
well feel proud ; but it is an honest and 
a worthy pride. Who can show such bril- 
liant foliage on their genealogical tree ? The 
faded leaves are still bright and beautiful; 
the wide spreading branches are strong with 
health and energy ; the deep-seated roots 
are adamantine in their firmness and their 
strength ; while the gallant old trunk stands 
triumphant, the beacon-light of a pure and 
noble ancestry ! (Cheers.) Yes, Alfred ! 
Thou dazzling meteor of a darker age. Al- 
fred ! the embodiment of all that makes men 
great, we claim thee as the founder of the 
Anglo-Saxon race ! The ancestor, through a 
thousand years, of Young America ! From 
thence till now, how grand, how kingly is 
our history — one continued blaze of flashing 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 55 

constellations ! Leave for a moment our 
noble relative in his glory, and, with the 
speed of thought pass on to the period when 
the seventh Henry occupied the regal chair, 
and stand with me on the " Pinta's " deck, 
and gaze in silent wonder through the glass 
of the great Genoese navigator upon a con- 
tinent, the future home of Young America ! 
(Applause.) Pass on another hundred years, 
and we are with other members of our dis- 
tinguished family, who have made their 
names immortal ; and who will deny that 
the genius of Shakspeare, the philosophy of 
Bacon, and the inspiration of John Milton, 
have shed a halo of undying fame upon pos- 
terity. 

" We cannot dwell on England's page without a thrill of pride, 
Her poets are our heritage — her statesmen are our guide." 

When Shakspeare's light went out, Young 
America's commenced to burn, for it was 
towards the close of the Protestant reign of 
the first James, about the time the hopeful 
Charles, with the gay YiUiers at his elbow, 
was pursuing a romantic courtship at the 
Spanish throne, before organizing the Star 
Chamber, so soon to be broken up by Crom- 



56 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

well, that a frail and tiny bark freighted 
with a hundred brave and virtuous men, 
whose conscience and religion w^ere more 
dear to them than all beside, touched that 
rock-bound coast, and the May-flower of the 
Old World in December bloomed afresh in 
the New. 

" Ye pilgrim fathers, though ye lie perchance in graves un- 
known, 
A memory that cannot die hath claimed thee for its own, 
A sacredness to that bleak shore yom* dust shall aye im- 
part — 
Your requiem — the ocean's roar — your shrine a nation's 
heart." (Loud cheering.) 

A few leagues further south sprung up the 
colony which the gallant Raleigh dedicated 
to England's virgin queen, and an Indian prin- 
cess gave her hand and heart to the Saxon 
planter, after risking her own life to stop the 
axe that was quivering over the life of the 
white man. Pocahontas, daughter of Pow- 
hattan ! not only the first families of Virginia, 
but we of Puritan origin, are not ashamed to 
own relationship with thy persecuted race ! 

Prophetic was the vision of Governor 
Berkeley when he saw in the infancy of the 
Old Dominion, the Star of Empire twinkling 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 5 7 

in the western firmament ! A century more 
we will leave behind us — only a few genera- 
tions back — and we are transfixed with ad- 
miration while listening to the burning elo- 
quence of Chatham and of Burke, as these 
great orators plead our cause at the bar of 
the British parliament, begging the stubborn 
old monarch to release us from the burdens 
that oppressed us. But no ; he refused. 
And as the sun breaks above the horizon, 
Young America commenced his glorious 
career. (Cheers.) Go with me to Washing- 
ton, and I will show you a life-like picture 
of the first congress adopting the Declaration 
of Independence. The Napoleonic laurels — 
the spoils of Italian conquest — which now or- 
nament the Louvre — were not more dear to 
the children of Italy, than the historical 
paintings of Col. Trumbull in the Rotunda 
of the Capitol are dear to Young America. 
But the citizen of the Great Republic trem- 
bles most with emotion when contemplating 
that spotless character — that has lived for 
more than half a century without a blemish ! 
Throughout all time, who will discover aught 
to mar the immortality of the father of his 
country ? If we cannot praise him, let the 

8* 



68 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

world be silent ! These good men all are 
gone, and others who have left their "foot- 
prints on the sands of Time,'"' or graven in the 
rock of ages are no more. Most of those 
intellectual giants that towered so far above 
their compeers, are with the dead ; and 
every true-hearted Young American will 
pay the willing tribute of a tear with equal 
sincerity at the tomb of the brilliant Caro- 
linian — the dignified sage of Ashland — or the 
magnificent logician and orator of Marshfield. 
(Applause.) 

How wonderful is the past ! We have gone 
over the changes of a thousand years, and 
have seen therein the grandeur of our race. 
But if the retrospective view has dazzled us, 
how much more astonishing is the present, 
when thirteen sparsely populated States have 
swollen into near forty living republics, bound 
together as one nation ; when our three mil- 
lions have grown to thirty, and "driven by 
the hand of God" to quote De Tocqueville — 
"are peopling the western wilderness at the 
average rate of seventeen miles of space per 
annum !" when our lilliputian commerce 
has whitened every sea, and our mother 
tongue has worked its way into every land ; 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 69 

and when our influence and our progress — 
like the ripple in mid-ocean — reaches from 
shore to shore ! Startle not, my friends, at 
the lightning pace of the pilgrim's steed ! 
He is sure to win the race — naught stops him 
in his destiny. When danger lurks in his 
pathway, he turns high his head and snorts a 
proud defiance at the precipice that would 
have engulfed him, and plunges on to vic- 
tory ! (Cheers.) 

If the past is so outshone by the present, 
what shall we say of the future — the dim, 
mysterious future ? Ask me not to draw the 
curtain. Events follow events too rapidly to 
leave room for man's conjecture. The map 
of the world a few years only hence will show 
the long range of divided empire. Asia al- 
ready trembles with the Tartar Revolution. 
Europe is blazing with the great changes that 
are bursting with volcanic majesty over mil- 
lions of armed men, while Africa looks on 
aghast ! Such is the position of the Eastern 
Hemisphere. Australia, too ! the infant set- 
tlement of all nations, is springing like magic 
into manhood. The picture of our island 
home stands boldly out, the first nation of the 
Indian Ocean, the young giant of the South- 



60 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

ern Seas, whose golden riches are as bound- 
less as the range of thought. Where, amidst 
the raging of the tempest, is the Saxon ship of 
state the while ? I answer, riding safely in 
the great harbor of the West. (Cheers.) 

Young America is only Young England in 
another hemisphere ; or rather. Young John 
Bull working in wider garments, with an en- 
ergy that was never brought out before, be- 
cause never fairly and properly nourished in 
his old ancestral isle. England and America 
are really partners, not rivals. The younger 
nation is the junior, who manages the west- 
ern branch of the old concern. Youth gives 
activity, and hence the young man opens his 
letters before breakfast on the steps of the 
Post-office, whilst the old gentleman prefers 
breaking the seal in dressing-gown and slip- 
pers after dinner. (Laughter.) Young Ame- 
rica showed the same feelings of independence 
in establishing a house of his own that every 
young man experiences who leaves the old 
firm to earn an honest livelihood by his own 
exertions. In this instance the connection 
with the old concern is of more value than 
with the balance of the world. The revolu- 
tion was merely an animated conversation, 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 61 

where shot and cannon were introduced to 
give emphasis to the debate, and when the 
disputed '' points " were settled, old England 
rose with renewed vigor in Young America. 
The sources of discord soon began to dry, and 
now, as the flower turns to the sun, the 
needle to the magnet, the child to its mother, 
as the twin brothers of Siam receive each the 
same emotions, so are we bound by speaking 
the same language and worshipping the same 
God, to remember England, the proud old 
mother of our race. 

" And join the Stars and Stripes and Cross in one fraternal 
band, 
Till Anglo-Saxon faith and laws illumine every land." 

1^0 discord should jar such friendly relations. 
The bare thought of it has touched a spring 
in the English poet's brain, who, when speak- 
ing of Roman, Saxon, Norman, and Danish 
conquest, elegantly observes — 

u We've grieved, we've sighed, we've wept, 
We never Mushed before." 

Give us, then, peace in Europe — but at all 
events, neutralitij and non- inter ventio7i in 
America. (Cheers.) 



62 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Young Americans, our strength is in our 
union. Divide us, and our power is gone. 
United, we gaze fearlessly on the startling 
scenes that now convulse the world. Break 
us asunder, and the fragments of the wreck 
would strew the beach for centuries. The Young 
American is the son of the pilgrim ; hence you 
find him here and everywhere. He knows 
no narrow-minded ideas of local virtue, no 
jealousy of others' progress. When opening 
the argument of his nativity and future 
prospects, he simply says with Webster — 
" There is my country, she speaks for herself. 
So long as the plains beyond the mountains 
remain uncultivated, you will find our eaglet's 
flight is onward and upward — straight on." 
Your pardon, gentlemen, and my thanks 
once more ; if my remarks have been too 
much extended, you should have given me a 
less prolific subject. And now, my friends, you 
must join me in drinking a flowing bumper 
to the anniversary — may we ever hail as en- 
thusiastically its return. Americans, I give 
you /' Our Country, long may she live !" 

*' Hail, our country's natal morn ! 
Hail, our wide spread kindred born I 
Hail, our banner — never torn, 

Waving o'er the free ! 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 63 

■ While this day, in festal throng, 
Millions swell the patriot's song, 
So will we our notes prolong ! 

Hallowed Jubilee !" (Cheers.) 



(From the New York Herald, July 26, 1857.) 

CompUme^itary Dinner on the Fourth of July, 1857, by the 
. American Residents in Liverpool, to the Officers of the 
United States Frigate Niagara, in Celebration of the 
Eighty-first Anniversary of American Independence. 

OFFICERS OF THE NIAGARA. 

Captain Hudson, Commander Pennock, 
Lieutenant Todd, Captain Rich, Marine offi- 
cer ; Purser Eldridge, Lieutenant Guest, Lieu- 
tenant Wells, Lieutenant Kennon, Chief En- 
gineer Everett, Assistant-Surgeons Lynch and 
Washington, Assistant -Engineers Kellog, 
Moore, Grier, McElwell and Kutz ; Mr. Hud- 
son, Captain's clerk, and Mr. Willard. 

First-Lieutenant North, Surgeon Palmer, 
Lieutenant Whiting, Lieutenant Macaulay, 
Lieutenant Boyd, and a number of junior offi- 
cers, were absent in consequence of having to 
attend duty on shipboard. 



64 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

AMERICAN RESIDENTS OF LIVERPOOL. 

Daniel James, Wm. Smith Bird, Benj. F. 
Sabcock, John Caro, S. B. Guion, C. K. Prio- 
leau, Richard S. Ely, James McHenry, Wm. 
T. Whittemore, John Calder, James Jackson, 
Wm. R. Morgan, W. W. Mertens, George 
Warren, Wm. L. Trenholm, Henry Nash, 
Eben Howes, R. M. A. Kerchevel, Frederick 
B. ElUott, D. P. Morgan, Henry Starr, David 
Stuart, Rutson Mavny, Robt. M. Grinnell, 
Stuart H. Brown, J. George Smith, Horace 
H. Stevens. 

AMERICAN GUESTS. 

Wm. B. Higgins, Manchester ; Mr. Baylor, 
United States Consul at Manchester ; J. S. 
Oakford, London ; Captain Oliver Eldridge, 
of the Atlantic ; George F. Train, of Boston ; 
J. H. Orme, James Maury, of ISTew Orleans ; 
Col. Follen, Chas. Roome, of N'ew York ; Jas. 
Buchanan Read, Abbott Brown, of N'ew 
York ; Rev. Mr. Calder, of Charleston, South 
Carolina ; C. T. Mitchell, of South Carolina, 
and J. Mullaly, of New York. 

The President read the eighth regular toast, 
as follows : 

'' Our Country." 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 65 

And the cheering, to borrow an old, but 
on this occasion a true quotation, by which it 
was followed, ''beggars all description.'^ 

Mr. Train, of Boston, a gentleman who has 
already made himself known to his country 
by his eminent success as a merchant in Aus- 
tralia, by his travels over the islands of the 
Indian Ocean, through the British East India 
possessions, in Europe and elsewhere, re- 
sponded to this toast. [I should remark here 
that his letters, which were published some 
time ago in the Herald, and which were de- 
scriptive of his travels, have rendered his 
name familiar to its readers.] He addressed 
the company as follows : 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen — our coun- 
try for four score years and one has been 
speaking a living language to the debt-bur- 
dened nations of the world, and stamps her 
own eulogy on every tree and shrub and 
river throughout our broad domain. Per- 
fume to the rose, light to the sun man can- 
not add, and words of mine can never glorify 
that land we love so well. Yet to be silent 
would be to slight your courtesy. A boy in 
years, you honor me first in inviting me here 
to night, and secondly, in giving me the toast 



QQ SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

of the evening. For both these compliments, 
gentlemen of the committee, accept the heart- 
felt obligations of one who dailj^ thanks his 
God that he is an American. You overrate 
my powers of speech, if so impromptu you 
think I can do justice to the sentiment. An 
hour since I knew not that my name stood 
opposite the toast ; but our country expects 
every man to do his duty. You draw on me 
at sight. I accept the draft. I am glad to 
meet the American merchants who have as- 
sembled together to celebrate the anniversary 
of our national independence. I am proud 
to shake hands with the officers of the grand- 
est war-ship in the world. My cup of plea- 
sure is overflowing to meet you around this 
social board — to listen to your eloquent 
bursts of nationality — to laugh when you 
laugh — to cheer when you cheer, as the bum- 
per toasts go round. (Applause.) Our 
country — sweet land of liberty! — " the land 
of the brave and the home of the free !'' How 
the blood rushes through our veins as we 
listen to the music of the Star-spangled Ban- 
ner — the music of universal unity ! (Ap- 
plause.) I am just from the Continent, where 
time to me was money in learning the Euro- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 67 

pean languages ; but I heard there no sounds 
so dear to me as those of my mother tongue. 
"Home, sweet home ^' is the syren song of 
every true American. No matter where I 
have drifted upon the sea of change, restless 
to add another page to the book of know- 
ledge, my love of country increases as the 
sands run through the glass. The world has 
opened the treasure box of nature, and I 
have gazed in silent astonishment at what has 
been spread before me. But, Mr. Chairman, 
whether looking at the crater down deep in 
the bowels of Vesuvius, or gazing on the 
Roman world from the dome of St. Peter's — 
bathing in the river Jordan, or culling flow- 
ers in the garden of Gethsemane — using the 
pickaxe two hundred feet below the earth's 
surface on the Balaarat — contemplating the 
delta and the desert five hundred feet above 
from the pyramid of Ghizeh — standing in 
company with an emu and a kangaroo on the 
shores of Botany Bay, or roaming over the 
ground trod by Sir John Franklin in Tas- 
mania — worshipping nature in the primeval 
forest at Buitenzorg, in Java, where the tomb 
of Lady Raffles reminded me that England 
once possessed that Garden of Eden, or sur- 



68 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

rounded by Ladrone pirates at the mouth of 
the Yank-tse-kiang as the typhoon swept us 
towards the shore — talkmg silks and teas with 
the merchant princes of Canton, or cor- 
morant fishing at Foo Chow-foo — wandering 
over the Mount of OUves — standing on the 
Leaning Tower of Pisa, or walking on the 
Hoogly's banks as the Sepoy army received 
Lord Canning — hstening to Louis Napoleon 
as he talked of American railways and his 
New York life, at the Tuileries, or hearing 
the deafening cheers that rang along the lines 
when the boy-Emp"eror of Austria rode 
through the ranks on the anniversary of the 
birthday of Maria Theresa — a pageant that 
occurs but once in a hundred years : — no 
matter where the tide of fortune takes me — 
and I have seen all lands, and heard all 
tongues in my one hundred and sixty thou- 
sand miles of rambling — " our country '' 
stands out in bold relief, the fairest land in 
Christendom ! Asia has heard of our pros- 
perity — Africa reads our history — Europe 
opens v/ide her eyes — Russia is proud of our 
Friendship — Austria respects us — France sees 
our giant growth — England trembles for her 
commerce — all the world wonders. The win- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 69 

ter ocean sings the requiem over that shiver- 
ing band of pilgrims whose bones make sacred 
that bleak New England shore, while Wash- 
ington Irving has sent Columbus' name down 
to future generations. Then come the pa- 
triots of '76 — that immortal band who, 
eighty-one years ago, so lion-hearted, signed 
their names to that eloquent declaration on 
yonder wall, and planted that tree of religious 
freedom and civil liberty that not only covers 
thirty millions of our people, but everywhere 
holds out its protecting branches to oppressed 
mankind, saying " Come unto me, and I will 
give you shelter." (Applause.) Yet while 
we lay our burning tears upon the graves of 
these towering minds, let us hope that the 
American forest will still show us the growth 
of intellectual purity and greatness. (Ap- 
plause.) Our eagle stoops to no small flight 
— the king of birds, as our country is the 
first of nations. Stand back, old mother land 
— think of the cotton and the corn — look at 
our commerce — remember our history — and 
in these days of doubt and dread that hang 
over Europe and your Indian empire, don't 
forget that America is your truest friend, 
where blood and kindred, laws and religion. 



70 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

bind us by an annual contract of one hundred 
millions sterling to keep the peace. (Ap- 
plause.) England boasts of that wonderful 
work in Wales — that fairy palace at Syden- 
ham — that astonishing bridge under the 
Thames — that monster steamship on its banks, 
and America points with pride to nature's 
noblemen — the cave of the West and the 
great Falls. But now art and nature are to 
be united. The Falls of Niagara cease to be 
an object of wonder in regarding the great 
achievements of science, and the whole world 
has forgotten it in the deep interest with 
which they are watching the result of the en- 
terprise in which the noble ship Niagara is 
engaged. As the river where Fulton effected 
on the water what Watts accomplished on the 
land, surely and safely made its way through 
its mountain paths to the sea, so will Hudson 
trace his track along the wave, and do his 
duty in acting as bridegroom at a wedding 
where all the world are spectators. (Ap- 
plause.) Cousins marry cousins in European 
courts, and the mind is dimmed by the union ; 
but here, father will marry daughter, and the 
result of the union will be the most brilliant 
chapter in the history of the civilised world. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 7l 

" On the same tablet that owns a Franklin's name, 
Thine, Morse, in living characters will flame." 

And when the two countries are struck 
by lightning, each may justly share the thun- 
der. (Renewed applause.) Depend upon 
it, the roUing-stone will belie the adage, and 
gather "moss,'' provided it has a "Field'' 
to work the electric fluid on the Stock Ex- 
change. Grand as will be the union of the 
two great Saxon empires, the union of our 
own fliir country is dearer to every Ameri- 
can than aught beside — 

" We are a great nation, while the silken band 

That binds the union of our happy land 

Eemains unbroken. 
"We, no doubt, may feel 

Of foreign influence or foreign steel — 

Turn back the bolts against us hurled— 

Throw down our gauntlet and defy the world 1" 

Our country right is our first thought ; but 
right or wrong our country. (Enthusiastic 
applause.) 

" Who shall sever Freedom's shrine ; 
Who will draw the invidious line? ^ 
Though by birth one spot is mine — 

Dear are all the rest — 
Dear to me the South's fair land, 
Dear your central western band — 
Dear Kew England's rocky strand, 

Dear the prairied West." 



72 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Let our voices ring round the world — past 
Cape Clear — past the banks of Newfound- 
land, rolling on to our Atlantic border, till 
the trapper catches the sound on the Rocky 
Mountains, and whirls it scornfully past 
Brigham Young and his nest of vipers, to 
the gem of the Pacific — California ; and still 
onward on that broad ocean, where another 
golden land has caught the fire, and where 
ten thousand Americans in Australia com- 
memorate that anniversary, the celebration 
of which I introduced there four years ago, 
and where they echo back the glorious words 
" Union ! Liberty !" (Applause.) 

" By our altars, pure and free — 
By our law's deep rooted tree — 
By the past's dead memory — 

By our Wasbingtou : 
By our hopes, briglit, buoyant, young — 
By our common kindred tongue — 
By our love of country strong, 

We will still be one." (Enthusiastic applause.) 

Again accept my thanks, and once more let 
me hear your cheer when I name the magic 
words — Our Country. 

Mr. Train's remarks were listened to 
throughout with the greatest interest, and 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. / O 

when he sat down, the applause with which 
they were received was renewed. 

(From the New York Herald, July 26th.) 

Mr. Purser Eldridge, after having been 
repeatedly called upon for a speech or senti- 
ment, regretted that he was not fluent of 
speech, and feared that he could contribute 
but little to the general entertainment if he 
were to make the attempt ; but as he had no 
doubt the company had been equally de- 
lighted with himself in listening to the elo- 
quent remarks that had fallen from the 
gentleman late of Australia, Mr. Train, he 
would feel obhged if he would act as his 
proxy and pour out a little more of that 
train oil which lubricated so well the ma- 
cbinery of speech and caused so great a flow 
of eloquence, poetry and patriotic senti- 
ment. 

The allusion to Mr. Train brought that 
gentleman good humoredly to his feet again, 
when he favored the company with another 
of those outbursts of passionate and fervidly 
patriotic eloquence which had electrified his 
audience in the earlier part of the evening. 

4 



74 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

(From the New York Tribune.) 

We have been betrayed into these natural 
and national reflections by noticing that at 
the dinner of American merchants in Liver- 
pool upon the last blessed Fourth of July 
that ever was, a gentleman by the name 
of Train — he ought hereafter to be called 
Lightning Train — brought out our bird and 
put him through his fliglits in a way which 
justly entitles the exhibiter to be called the 
Yan Amburgh of Eagles. At that banquet 
we were in a bad way for a little while. Prof. 
Morse, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Hawthorne, and 
other well-known Americans, had sent their 
regrets and their toasts — some dry and some 
buttered — in envelopes. Captain Hudson of 
the Niagara was present, but that gentle- 
man, albeit an incarnate man-of-war, declined 
to fire a broadside, and contented himself 
with making a modest speech. Our eagle 
was actually beginning to moult ; but when 
the toast *' Our Country'' was given, Mr. 
Train of Boston was instantly upon his legs, 
and was after that lion in the twinkling of 
an eye. In a second the quadruped was 
floored. Talk about bearding ! Why, that 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. i 

animal was down to the degree that he will 
never get up again. The lions in Daniel's 
den must have been in low spirits when they 
found themselves hungry, instead of having 
a prophet for supper as they had expected ; 
but we can tell the reader that those lions 
were as light-hearted as children at play, in 
comparison with their British brother upon 
the Fourth of July in Liverpool 



Impromptu Remarks made at a Banquet given by Messrs. 
James Baines S^ Co., Liverpool, England, on hoard their 
Packet-ship Oliver Lang, New Zealand bound. 

The leading merchants, bankers, and edi- 
tors of Liverpool were present. 

(From the Northern Times, Liverpool, 1S56.) 

T. M. Mackaylery in the chair. 

The Chairman again rose and said : Gen- 
tlemen, it would ill become us, while we are 
rejoicing in the prosperity of New Zealand, 
to forget that of the sister colony of Australia, 
whose golden regions have contributed so 
much to the wealth of New Zealand at the 
present moment. I am happy to say that 



76 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

we have in this assembly, one of the most 
eloquent and most esteemed merchants of 
Melbourne, and from the reports that we re- 
ceive from time to time of its enormous auri- 
ferous deposits, one is almost induced to con- 
sider that there may be some truth in the 
theory that " gold is not riches." I know of 
no person who is more calculated to unde- 
ceive the " slow coaches " of the old country, 
than Mr. Train — (laughter) — and I beg to 
couple his name with the toast — " The port 
and trade of Melbourne." (Hear, hear.) 

The toast was drank with all the honors. 

Mr. Train responded. He said : Mr. 
Chairman and gentlemen, it is a proud thing 
for an American to be thus honored. I can 
hardly speak. You pay me a high compli- 
ment in asking me to respond to such a sen- 
timent. But you have over-rated my ability 
in expecting me to do it justice. To remain 
silent, however, would be to be forgetful of 
the many pleasant days I have passed under 
an Australian sun ; but when I see so many 
eloquent men about me — so many English- 
men, (merchants connected with the colonies) 
— my feelings tell me that you should have 
devolved upon others the duty of responding 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 77 

to the toast of the port and trade of Mel- 
bourne. My fitter place would be to get be- 
hind the awning, and make room for others 
who could speak the English language in a 
manner pleasing to you all, combining in- 
struction with information. (Cries of " No, 
no.'') But fortunately for me, the port and 
trade of Melbourne require no champion — no 
defender. If New Zealand, according to Sir 
Robert Peel, is to be the Great Britain of the 
Eastern Ocean, what will Melbourne be, I 
ask ? (Hear, hear, and cheers.) It is scarcely 
twenty years since a British Minister was 
complimented upon giving to a great Austra- 
lian port a name ; and that name will be as 
lasting as the knowledge of England's great- 
ness. (Cheers.) It is but a short time ago 
— I think it was about the time that the great 
financial whirlwind was passing through the 
world, in 1838 — when a httle body of settlers 
touched at Port Philip, and planted the seed 
of a future empire. Years passed on. You 
heard nothing through the lands but the low- 
ing of cattle and the bleating of sheep. Time 
kept pace — years rolled by — quiet was reign- 
ing in the land — the Australian boor was 
talking to the Australian shepherd, and the 



78 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

boomerang was whistling over the squatter's 
hut — when suddenly there came a eureka 
shout from Ballarat. It passed through the 
land. It passed through the colonies like a 
prairie fire. It was heard at Melbourne, 
Port Philip, and Adelaide. It passed along 
round the Cape, by St. Helena, and on 
through England, America, and the whole 
world, like an electric flash. (Applause.) I, 
among the first, was in the field. I left Bos- 
ton at the commencement of 1853, and ar- 
rived at the port of Melbourne, and saw there 
some 600 square-rigged vessels, and none dis- 
charging. Such a sight no man ever saw 
before, nor will he ever see again ; I could 
hardly believe my eyes. I went out with my 
clerks, each man with a revolver. (Laughter.) 
I went out armed, as I thought I was going 
to a convict country, and that you could not 
take up the Melbourne Argus without reading 
of people being shot down in the streets. 
What was my astonishment to see the port 
completely packed with shipping ; but I 
found little facility there for working them. 
I found no warehouses — no docks, like yours, 
Mr. Mayor. I saw nothing commensurate 
with its greatness. "We soon took hold — 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 79 

English, Scotch, Irish, and American, alto- 
gether ; and now behold the change ! 
£34,000,000 sterling of property you sent us 
in two years for a population of less than 
250,000. (Laughter.) And do you wonder 
at the result ? I remember when I left Bos- 
ton, one of what we call the long-headed 
merchants — men who send out in long voy- 
ages, to India and China, and wait during 
twelve months before remittances can come 
to them — met me in the street. '' Well, you 
are going to Australia?" "Yes." "You 
will see a sight that will astonish your eyes ; 
you will see men in the streets borne down 
with bags of gold — gold in their pockets, gold 
on their backs, gold around their necks — 
starving to death !" I asked him what about 
their 12,000,000 head of sheep ; and he re- 
plied, " why man, they cannot live on mutton 
all their lives." (Laughter.) At that time 
there were forty ships in New York, and 
twenty in Boston, and who can wonder at the 
result. A friend of mine sent me a case of 
buttons on account of a Huddersfield firm, 
and I remember how I tried in vain to sell 
it, and how I eventually returned net profits 
of £3 4s. lOd. (Laughter.) I sent them 



80 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

those net profits, and the only reply I ever 
got was a bill of lading for a package of cham- 
pagne, saying that it was the first returns 
that they had had. (Laughter.) But the 
trade and port of Melboilrne now ! I tell 
you that they speak for themselves, and need 
nothing to be said in their behalf. We have 
got warehouses, we have got gas, we have 
got water, we have got a railway — only a 
short one as yet, to be sure, two miles — and 
no one has done more than you, gentlemen 
of Liverpool, for that port. I assure you 
that I am proud of that country. All Aus- 
tralians must be proud of it ; no other place 
can rival it. I once thought I would go on 
to see if there were a nicer place, and I went 
on to Java, Singapore, and along the Chinese 
shore for thousands of miles. I came down 
again, and met an English merchant every- 
where. At every place I found a British 
man-of-war, a British consul, and a British 
merchant. I went up to Hindostan — I called 
at Ceylon — but found no more flourishing 
place than Melbourne ; to Eden, through the 
Red Sea, through Lower Egypt and Cairo — 
but r found no richer place than Melbourne ; 
so ran down by Joppa and Jerusalem. I 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 81 

went all through that country to the Dead 
Sea, and then to Jericho. (Roars of laugh- 
ter.) I came back again through Syria and 
Palestine — but I found no such go-aheadative 
place as Melbourne. I went to Cyprus, La- 
takia, Beyrout, Acre, through Tripoli, through 
the Dardanelles on to Constantinople — but I 
found no such place as Melbourne. I then 
thought I would see the great arena of the 
recent struggle — the great battle-field — and 
down I went to the Crimea. There was an 
astonishing sight ! I felt I would have seen 
nothing, accomplished nothing, had I not 
gone to the Crimea. I was down there 
at the end of April, but peace was then 
restored. Every Englishman I met on the 
way, when I talked of peace howled it down 
again. They said that England wanted time 
to get into fighting trim — to have her pluck 
fairly aroused — that now it wasn't, and that 
fight they would. But peace came. I went 
to Kamiesch and Balaklava, and I roamed 
over those battle-fields that you have spoken 
of. I saw the famed redoubts where the 
Turks ran away. (Laughter.) I saw the 
spot where Captain Nolan brought the order, 
from whom I never knew — (laughter) — to 



82 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Lucan and asked him to charge. " My God, 
what shall I charge ?" " There is the enemy, 
and these are my orders." I seemed to hear, 
as I stood on that now historic spot, solilo- 
quize, " Well, here goes the last of the Car- 
digans " — (Laughter) — and down they went. 
I went to the Alma. I passed on to Inkerman, 
where those British Guards, who will always 
guard your country, fought so nobly — I saw 
the Mamelon — I entered Sebastopol — I cross- 
ed to the North side — I entered the Bal- 
bekbut, gentlemen, I found no better place 
than Melbourne. (Laughter.) I hurried on 
through the Continent. I touched at Trieste, 
and was landed between Austrian bayonets, 
and from the time I landed until I departed 
I was signed and counter-signed, checked and 
counter-checked, vised and re-vised, up one 
side and down the other. (Laughter.) Every 
man seemed to regard me as a thief — an in- 
cendiary ; and, thank God ! when I got on 
British soil, I felt that Americans and Eng- 
lishmen were one. I never was so glad of it 
as when I got to England, and where I no 
longer required a passport. I feel proud as 
an American, to meet so many Englishmen. 
I have just crossed the Atlantic, and have 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 83 

brought to you the well wishes of a whole 
host of people. (Cheers.) I assure you, in 
spite of ministerial dispatches, editorials, and 
electioneering speeches, the feeling in Ame- 
rica still is, that 

*' Tiiough oceans roll between us — tliough our lauds are far 

apart, 
Though rival mothers bore us, we are brothers still at heart ; 
Let us think upon the ancient blood that circles in our 

veins, 
And drain the cup of fellowship while yet a drop remains. 
Here's a health to hallowed Albion, the jewel of the sea, 
And her daughter, fair Columbia, the happy and the free : 
Long may their sons their praises sing, friendship's joyful 

strains, 
And drain the cup of fellowship while yet a drop remains." 

I am wandering from the toast, but the An- 
glo-Saxon race still lives in the 60,000,000 
of Americans and Englishmen throughout 
these countries, and though they have been 
spoken of as missionaries to the aboriginal 
races, yet I can tell you that missionary en- 
terprise does not do half as well as British 
cannon. In 1842, when you broke down the 
barriers of the Chinese empire, you did one 
of the best things in the whole world for these 
nations. You broke down the barriers, and 
then Jonathan walked in, and took his share 



84 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

of the trade. (Laughter.) In conclusion, I 
will, give you a toast which will bring you all 
on your feet. I am proud that I am the guest 
of Mr. Mackay. (Hear, hear.) I have lis- 
tened to his remarks with pleasure, and look 
upon him not alone as one of the leading 
merchants, but one of the most eloquent ora- 
tors in your land. 

" Great in the counting-house — peerless in debate; 
Who follows Mackay, takes the train too late." 

(Great laughter.) I propose to you "The 
health of Mr. Mackay,'^ and call on you to re- 
ceive it with a cheer that will make the wel- 
kin ring. (Applause.) 

The toast was drunk with three times 
three. 

The chairman, in responding to the toast, 
was received in the most enthusiastic man- 
ner. He said : Gentlemen, how am I to 
return thanks for this ovation ? I am sure 
we have all been delighted with what we 
just heard, and I do not know that I ever 
heard a more entertaining, a more practical, 
a more useful and instructive speech than 
that delivered by Mr. Train, and I hope the 
enjoyment has been natural. , , , . Be- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 85 

fore I sit down, permit me to propose the 
health of a branch of the aristocracy — it is 
The health of the Hon. Stuart Wortley, 
(cheers,) who is a guest at our table this day. 
The honorable gentleman won golden honors 
at Canterbury, but since he came of age, he 
has been in Kew Zealand — the land of his 
adoption. I beg to propose the health of 
the honorable gentleman, and may God send 
him every blessing. (Applause.) 

The Hon. Mr. Stuart Wortley rose, and 
was received with loud applause. He said : 
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it is no easy 
matter, after a speech, such as that with 
which Mr. Train has favored us, for me to 
address you. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I 
do not know how he may feel himself, but lis- 
tening to him has quite put me out of breath. 
(Laughter.) He carried us round the world 
in a shorter space of time almost than one 
could have thought of it. We have been, I 
believe, beginning at Melbourne — throughout 
every part of the known world, and almost 
every part of the unknown world, and I con- 
fess that my ideas have become so scattered 
in consequence, that it is with no small 
difficulty I can collect them. (Laughter.) 



SQ SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

But I feel it a peculiar honor to be here in 
Liverpool, and to be in any way associated 
with an undertaking, such as that which 
Messrs. Jas. Baines & Co. this day are in- 
augurating, I feel it to be a sign, not only 
that James Baines & Co. are doing what may 
turn out, I trust, to be a great benefit to 
them and the colony, but I feel myself, as a 
New Zealand colonist, proud, because it 
shows that we are not resting where we 
we were — that it is now worth the while of 
Baines & Co. to do what ten years ago 
they would not have thought of. It shows 
that we have. not lost the opportunities we 
had, but that we have done our best to bring 
our country under notice for her favorable 
advancement, and to deserve the efforts 
which our English friends are making for us. 
(Hear, hear.) And, gentlemen, the way by 
which a country of that description can be 
made most fit for enterprises of commercial 
magnitude, is by numbering among her 
people such energetic characters as Mr. 
Train. (Hear, hear.) After the sketch he 
has given of himself, of the way in which he 
started from Boston, when the difficulties of 
Melbourne appeared to be insurmountable, 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 87 

that must appear sufficiently evident. I 
know the position which he has attained in 
that colony, for his name is known beyond 
the limits of Melbourne — known even in New 
Zealand. It is by means of characters of 
that description, with such a native energy, 
and I trust I may say, with a dash of the 
Yankee in them, that a new country will 
prosper — and when I say a dash of the Yan- 
kee, I mean that which a colonist necessarily 
gathers — a habit of helping himself, doing 
everything for himself, and not trusting 
to other people to do it for him. (Ap- 
plause.) .... 

(From the Liverpool Courier.) 

The speech of the day, however, was that 
of Mr. Train, the Melbourne agent of 
Messrs. Pilkington & Wilson's, " White 
Star " line of clipper ships. Mr. Train is an 
American, of the most thorough '' go-ahead" 
principles, and his style of speaking and act- 
ing beautifully illustrate the picturesque elo- 
quence of the "Yankee." He dashed on at 
a rate which would have double distanced an 
"express-train," and in his glowing periods, 
put a " girdle round about the globe " in half 



8 8 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

the time proposed by ''Puck." In the feU- 
citous language of the Hon. S. Wortley, he 
had been " over all of the known, and most 
of the unknown world," and performed 
the feat in a style more accordant with the 
speed of light than in unison with the ordi- 
nary modes of travel. He was listened to 
with breathless attention, and was rewarded 
by tremendous outbursts of applause and 
laughter. 

(From the Boston Gazette.) 

Young Mr. Train. — Our former towns- 
man, Mr. Gr.. F. Train, has recently made a 
tremendous spread-eagle speech in England, 
upon the occasion of the reop'ening of trade 
between Liverpool and New Zealand, when 
Messrs. James Baines & Co. gave an enter- 
tainment on board of their fine ship, the 
Great Tasmania. 

Mr. Train's speech was received with im- 
mense applause, especially that portion in 
which he laid out a geographical map of his 
w^ondrous travels, and gave it as his opinion 
that there is no place like Melbourne. We 
believe Mr. Train was invited by the Czar of 
Russia to be present at his coronation. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 89 



Speech of Geo. Francis Train, Esq., delivered at the dimmer 
given by Gen. John S. Tyler, at the Parker House, on the 
anniversary of Webster- s birthday, January ISth, 1858. 

I KNOW not how to thank you, Mr. Chair- 
man and gentlemen, for this most unex- 
pected testimonial of the well wishes which 
you bear me. Your kind hearts and good 
nature speak a fair greeting and a cordial 
welcome home. Crowd as many pleasant 
words as you can into a paragraph, and take 
them for my thanks, for the evening hour is 
late — morning is close at hand, and I am too 
full of enthusiasm, awakened by the eloquent 
speeches of your governors, your mayors, 
your merchants and others who have aroused 
our cheers to-night, to tax your kindness b}^ 
giving the dullest prose in return for the 
sweetest poetry. I am just from Washing- 
ton, where, on Thursday night, I sat at the 
social board in the shade of some of the 
statesmen of our land who met to do honor 
to the poet Mackay, who bears away pleas- 
ant memories of your kindness to him while 
in Boston. 'Twas a national party — Seward 
of New York sat down with Quitman from 



90 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Mississippi, Burlingame of Massacliusetts with 
Boyce of Carolina, Parott of Kansas with 
Sherman of Ohio, Shields of Minnesota with 
Ward of Xew York, and so on through the 
Union. The East and the West, the N"orth 
and the South wnth one accord extending a 
welcoming hand to the warmhearted English- 
man, who read to us the finest national poem 
in our language, and in such company at 
such a time I was proud to see the profound 
respect given (to the man whose natal morn 
we celebrate), when the toast w^as offered to 
the memory of Daniel Webster. 

Leaving Washington on Friday, I found in 
New York, on Saturday, your kind note of 
invitation to meet the Webster Marshals and 
the Boston Merchants ; and an hour since I 
landed in your city and here I am to thank 
you for this most generous welcome home. 



" I am with you once again, my friends, 
No more my footsteps roam. 
Where it began, my journey ends, 
Amid tlie scenes of home. 
No other cHmes has skies so blue, 
Or streams so wide and clear, 
And where are hearts so warm and true 
As those that greet me here ? 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 9 1 

Since last with spirits wild and free 

I pressed my native strand, 

I've wandered many miles at sea 

And many miles on land ; 

I've seen fair cities of the eartli 

"With rude commotion torn. 

Which taught me how to prize the worth 

Of this where I was horn !" (Applause.) 

Five years have flown away since the 
Webster Marshals met on a similar occasion 
— more than five years since the great man 
died. Five years have tolled their knell 
since the world commenced to mourn o'er 
his departure to the world immortal. We 
meet to-night to do honor to the memory of 
Daniel Webster. We loved him while living 
— we cannot forget him now that he is dead. 
His name is in the school-books, and genera- 
tions will keep it ever green. " His requiem 
is the ocean's roar — his trust the nation's 
heart." 

You ask me, Mr. Chairman, to give an ac- 
count of my stewardship during my long ab- 
sence. Do you forget the hour? Do you 
not see around you a score of eloquent 
speakers loaded to the muzzle, ready to be 
discharged ? I am in the ranks, you are 
general here, the command is peremptory. I 



92 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

obey orders if I break owners. Look at the 
clock and wind me up when you cease to be 
interested. (Laughter.) 

'Tis just five years ago since I shook hands 
with you all, bade good bye to my native 
land, passed Rio de Janeiro and the African 
cape, and landed at ^i^Ybourne — that bourne 
from which it was said no traveller returns — 
(it should have been no returns for consign- 
ments) — and since then I have been studying 
practical geography while whirling around 
and over the world. 

The clipper ship, the screw steamer, the 
Arab horse, the Egyptian dromedary, the 
Syrian mule, and the Asiatic donkey have 
assisted as a kind of galvanic battery with 
which I have kept up a kind of telegraphic 
communication between the Old World and 
the New ; but I return once more to tell you 
that I have found nothing, so fair, so grand, 
so noble, as my native land, and that when 
gazing upon the dark faces and darker intel- 
lects of the native tribes, the words of that 
great statesman were ever ringing in my 
ear, " Thank God, I am an American f' (Ap- 
plause.) 

From the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 9 6 

from the South Sea to the Pacific, wherever 
I have marked the habits and customs of the 
world, these words were on my lips. In New 
Holland, whose natives, like the country, 
seem upside down — where the swans are all 
black, the flowers have no odor, and the 
birds no song — where the trees shed their 
bark instead of their leaves, and the cherry- 
stones grow on the outside ; where 'tis cold 
in summer and hot in winter, and the stem 
of the pear grows on the big end ; where, as 
Sydney Smith says, there is an animal with a 
head like a hare, a body like a deer, and a 
tail like a bed-post, taking three skips to a 
mile (laughter), and nothing else like other 
climes ; throughout the Australian gold-fields, 
from Maryborough to Tarrangower, from 
Burra Burra to Wooloomooloo, steaming 
through Bass's Straits in the Golden Age, or 
being entertained in the Governor's palace at 
Sydney ; in the orange groves of Parram- 
matta, or on the banks of Botany Bay, where 
a small white slab spoke of La Perouse, the 
French navigator, who lost his life before 
Cook the Englishman made the land — 
throughout all these lands I looked at the 
poor miserable natives, a kind of cross be- 



94 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

tween a boot-jack and an ourang-outang, 
producing the lowest specimen of mankind ; 
I reflected upon the degraded state of those 
races, and the electric words of that great 
man whose picture looks so severely in the 
face from yonder wall came into mind, 
'' Thmik God, lam an American P'' (Ap- 
plause.) 

'Twas the same in the Southern Ocean ; 
standing on the South Head, at the rock- 
bound gateway at Port Jackson, gazing sea- 
ward over the French colony of New Cale- 
donia — over the Red Indians of New Zea- 
land — running up the Derwent to Hobart- 
town — through the Tasmanian forests, where 
Sir John Franklin first lost his way, before 
on the other side of the world he lost it to 
return no more forever ; over to Launceston, 
where the convicts' chains grated on my ear, 
and some half a dozen murderers w^ere swing- 
ing off together, I shuddered as I looked, 
and observing the shrunk and shrivelled abo- 
riginals of Van Diemen's land on Flindar's 
Island, who, although so near the Australian 
borders, never saw 

"The boomerang, whicli the Australian throws, 
Cut its own circle and hit you on the nose." 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 95 

Nor had they ingenuity enough to make a 
canoe ! their brain smaller than that of emu 
and kangaroo — I could but remember the 
genius of my countrymen, and say with 
Webster : " Thank God, I am an Ameri- 
can /" 

Onward, past King's Island — where your 
clippers Whistler and Flying Arrow were 
dismasted — past Otway and Northumberland 
— into the Straits of Sunda — at Anger and 
Batavia — where I luxuriated in the mangos- 
tine, the banana, the masgar and the delicious 
fruits of Java — further on to Buitenzorg, 
where I saw the tomb of Lady RaflEes, and 
graves that were fragrant with incense — 
where the cassowary and the tiger live and die 
in the jungle ; but with all the beauty of the 
birds and beasts — with all the attractions of 
the fruits and odors of the flowers — with all 
the native grandeur of that Eastern Paradise, I 
noticed the primitive cultivation of the Malay, 
and the buffalo teams of the Javanese — saw 
that terrible weapon, the kriss, observed the 
cloudy mind of this old-fashioned race, and 
remembering my native land, I said, " Thank 
God, I am an A^ncrican ! " 

Then I hurried on, past Rajah Brooks in 



96 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

his colony of Sarawak in Borneo ; stopped to 
see the tin mines of Banca, owned by the 
brother of the King of Holland ; sang Hail 
Columbia when I saw the American flag at 
Sumatra ; paid my respects to the Governor 
of Singapore, and then hurrah for China, with 
all the ports from Hong Kong to the Hoang- 
Ho — from the Yang-tze-kang to Foo-chow- 
foo — all along the Asiatic shore, observing 
everybody and everything. I saw your beau- 
tiful clippers taking in the silks and tea. I 
saw the rice-fields irrigated to the mountain 
top, the rich mormo, the mulberry tree, and 
the tea districts ; the armed opium-clippers 
at Woosung, and the missionary village at 
Shanghae, and running down over Commo- 
dore Perry's track by Japan, Chusan, and 
Formora, with monsoons, typhoons and water 
spouts for companions, I thought of the won- 
derful government that could bind together 
400,000,000 of people, people who were civil- 
ized when our ancestors were savages, who 
understood the art of making gunpowder — 
printing on wood — the power of the magnet 
and the mariner's compass ; a nation of navi- 
gators and actors ; the most industrious race 
on the face of the globe. I gave them credit 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 97 

for all this ; laughed at then' funny ways, re- 
versing everything even to fanning their faces 
and scratching their heads — (loud laughter.) 
— shaking hands with themselves instead of 
you — commencing the book at the end — 
reading up the page instead of across — put- 
ting eyes on their trunks — wearing tales two 
yards long — eating with chopsticks — com- 
mencing their dinner with the dessert and 
ending with the soup — using small pieces of 
tissue paper for napkins, and bringing their 
wine on in tea cups, hot. I observed all these 
peculiarities, and gave them every credit for 
honor and integrity in their mercantile trans- 
actions, their wonderful industry, their care 
of father and mother. But when I looked 
round in vain to find the footprint of Anglo- 
Saxon progress, no telegraphs, no railways, 
no steamboats, how could I help repeating 
with yon great man, " Thank God, I am an 
AmericanP^ (Cheers.) 

Ten years later, Americans and Englishmen 
may be drinking sherry cobblers, and singing 
Saxon songs at Pekin. 

'Twas the same in Hindostan. . I saw the 
Sepoy army, I talked with Lord Canning and 
Lord Dalhousie, and was disgusted with the 

5 



9 8 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

red tapeism of the Honorable East India 
Company. The Punjaub horsemen were 
there and Burmese and KUngs, Hindoos and 
Brahmins, a hundred thousand men. But I 
sickened at the sight of adjutant and carrion 
kites that hover round the dead upon the 
banks of the Ganges. I saw the bodies float- 
ing on tlie river, a species of human shrimp 
trap. I noticed the disgusting tortures of 
their Hindoo worship, saw their indigo plant 
and their opium cultivation. But my thoughts 
wandered far away from the land of Robert 
Clive and Warren Hastings, from the Black 
Hole and Surah-ul-Dowla,h, to the land of the 
brave and the home of the free. I remem- 
bered that I was born in the shade of Faneuil 
Hall and said, " Thank God, I am an Ameri- 
can P^ (Loud applause.) 

It was the same in Ceylon with the Singal- 
ese, in Africa with the Nubians and Arabs, 
from the Bed Sea to the Mediterranean, from 
Moses in the bulrushes to Noah on Ararat ; 
looking at those monuments of barbarism 
and man's vanity, the pyramids, I wondered 
how Pompey's pillar was raised, thought 
Cleopatra's the largest needle known, saw 
Said Pacha review his Egyptian army, was 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 99 

hunted out of the seraglio gardens for daring 
to look into the harem by a lot of demons 
who seemed proud to think that they were 
neither man nor woman, stepped out of Egypt 
into Palestine, ran down to the Crimea, and 
back to Constantinople, where the Sultan, 
with national pride, pointed to his splendid 
regiments of Turkish troops, and asked if we 
had anything like them over the sea. I could 
but smile, for I remembered our standing 
army of a million of men, the American mili- 
tia, the Massachusetts militia, the soldiers of 
my native city, so many of whose oJ0&cers 
have gladdened our hearts at the festive board 
to-night. (Applause.) I looked at the 
Turkish army ; reflected upon the down-trod- 
den land of the Moslem, where the harem 
eats up the taxes of the state, and steaming 
out of the Bosphorus, I could but remark, 
" Thank God, I am an Americaji !'^ (Ap- 
plause.) 

Though speaking rapidly, my time is up, 
and yet I have not told half the story. When 
a man makes a point he should sit down, but 
I lack judgment in such things. When you 
tell me to go on, I think you mean it, and as 
we are not talking against time as they do in 



100 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Congress, I must hurry along the course, stop 
a moment in Italy, to look at the poor priest- 
ridden country, contemplate the land of 
Columbus, of Marco Polo and of Tasso, and 
hasten on through all the European lands — 
from Civita Yecchia to the Cattegat, from 
Gratz to Helsingfors, from Tipperary to Nijni 
Novgorod, from the Shagaret to Wiesbaden, 
from Cornhill to Cairo, from Moscow to Man- 
tua — lookhig sharp at everything, seeing the 
Revolution in the faces of the people, observ- 
ing the calm before the tempest, seeing hu- 
manity by the wholesale, and noticing the 
proportion that runs through nature. Re- 
marking all this, how often have I compared 
my native land with those far-off countries ; 
thought of our free schools, our free church, 
our broad domain — I thought of you, Gene- 
ral, and of our brave and steadfast militia, 
the guardians of the soil, our beautiful women 
and our manly men, and involuntarily said 
with the great statesman whose memory we 
have honored to-night, " Thank God, I am an 
American .'" 

If other nations are so proud of their land, 
we have a right to speak of ours. Mackay 
uses strong language for Brother Jonathan : 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 101 

" I feel the promptings of my youth 
That urge me evermore 
To spread my name — my race — my fame 
From shore to furthest shore. 
I feel the lightnings in my blood, 
The thunders in my hand, 
And I must worlc my destiny^ 
Whoever may withstand." 

(Loud applause.) 

Excelsior is our motto. Industry and 
honesty, our companions, and everlasting 
Union in our land, make a Siamese twin 
bond 'with every State. My namesake has 
alluded to the great names that once adorned 
our Senate. Carolina, Kentucky, and Massa- 
chusetts weep for their sons who have shed 
such a halo of fame around the flag we love 
so well. 

" Lo, Carolina mourns her steadfast pine 

Which like a mainmast towered above the realm, 
And Ashland hears no more that voice divine 

From out the branches of her forest elm. 
Now Marshfield's giant oak, whose snowy brow 

Oft turned the ocean tempest from the west, 
Lies on the shore he guarded long, and now 

Our startled eagle knows not where to rest." 

Once more, General, I thank you for your 
kind words, and you, gentlemen, for your 
warm welcome ; your applause thrills through 



102 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

my blood, and in accepting it I can but say, 
" Thank God, I am an American /" (Cheers.) 



(From the London Times.) 

ANNIYEKSARY OF AMEKICAK INDEPEIN"- 
DENCE. 

The 82d anniversary of the Declaration of 
the independence of the United States was 
celebrated by a banquet held last night at 
the London Tavern, and attended by about 
150 American gentlemen resident in this me- 
tropolis. The dinner took place under the 
auspices of the American Association, a So- 
ciety recently established in London, for the 
benefit of citizens of the States while sojourn- 
ing in this country. The banquet w^as presided 
over by General Robert B. Campbell, United 
States Consul at London, on whose right sat 
Mr. Dallas, the American Minister ; and 
among the company were — Mr. J. R. Croskey, 
Captain Mangles, M.P., Mr. R. W. Kennard, 
Dr. Charles Mackay, Mr. M. Marshall, Mr. P. 
N. Dallas, Mr. Benjamin Moran, Assistant- 
Secretary of American Legation, Mr. W. L. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 103 

Hurlbut, Mr. C. E. Morrell, Mr. Edward 
Koyce Browne, Dr. Ballard, Mr. George F. 
Train, Mr. Thornton Hunt, Mr. Whitehead, 
of New York, Dr. Holland, Mr. F. L. Camp- 
bell, Mr. John G. Elsey, Mr. William Milli- 
ken, Mr, Henry Kennard, Mr. Collie Grattan, 
Mr. John P. Kennard, Rev. G. A. Herklotz, 
Mr. James Samuel, etc., etc. 

Letters of apology for non-attendance were 
received from the Hon. James T. Mason, 
American Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
France, from the principal American Consuls 
in the United Kingdom, from Mr. George Pea- 
body, the Bight Hon. Milner Gibson, and 
others. The room was tastefully decorated 
with the star-spangled banner and the union- 
jack, and over the President's table hung 
portraits of General and Lady Washington, 
and also an excellent likeness of Queen Vic- 
toria, graciously lent by her Majesty for the 
occasion. A group of ladies occupied the 
gallery after the dinner 

SPEECH AT THE LONDON TAVERN, JULY 5, 1858. 

'' Young America and Old England — di- 
vided in 1776, united in 1858." Proposed 
by Robert William Kennard, Esq., of Eng- 



104 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

land ; responded to by George Francis Train, 
Esq.. of America, as follows : 

Not to respond to such a sentiment, is not 
to appreciate it ; and not to appreciate it, is 
to be unconscious of its sterling merits, and 
your courtesy, Mr. Chairman, in giving me 
such a golden opportunity to tell you how 
proud I am to meet around this social board 
so many of my fellow-countrymen ; how proud 
I am to see with us so many loyal Eng- 
lishmen — Englishmen and Americans alike 
charmed by the large-hearted eloquence 
of those who have so happily entertained 
us. No American, no Englishman could 
remain silent when his name is associated 
with a toast opening so wide, so generous a 
field. 

'Tis difficult to decide where to take it up 
or where to drop it. Perhaps, as happy 
speeches and pleasant words will be the order 
of our mutual admiration society — for most 
societies of this nature are of that stamp — • 
a good-natured comparison between our re- 
spective countries will be acceptable. 

Young America desires to "make a clean 
breast of it,'' and tell Old England a few 
plain facts. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 105 

America is misrepresented in England — 
" Hear me for my cause/' and I will tell yoii 
how unfair it is, in our day and generation, 
for Englishmen to continue to judge Ameri- 
cans by the records of the police court. 

Natural ties should make us natural allies 
— Young America is not more a muling 
puling babe than England is a " lean and 
slippered pantaloon " — the growing States 
composing our Federal Union, are not more 
coarse pieces of raw cotton woven into a wind- 
ing-sheet, than the colonies and kingdoms of 
the British Empire are patches on a thread- 
bare garment. As London is an aggregation 
of small towns and villages, so America is a 
union of individual states. (Applause.) 

Think well of a man, and you will not easily 
be persuaded that he is wrong ; prejudge, 
and you will always suspect him. The same 
applies in our estimate of nations. 

Pervert history, misrepresent fact, and you 
poison the growing mind — the scarred sap- 
ling makes the crooked oak. For a long 
time, Americans have been caricatured by 
the English press, and when we shrink at the 
ridicule, we are called a thin-skinned people. 
Punch follows the Times — both are household 

6* 



106 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

gods ; the people laugh and weep as their 
oracles dictate. 

Here is their picture of a live American : — 
Slouched hat — lank hair — sallow face — striped 
pantaloons — swallow-tail coat — quid in mouth 
— whittling a stick — no spittoon on floor 
— brandy smasher on table — bowie-knife and 
parish tooth-brush in pocket — and revolver 
in belt. (Laughter.) Add a peculiar nasal 
twang, and place his feet on the mantel-piece, 
and you have the type of my poor fellow- 
countryman as portrayed to the good people 
of England — a caricature even worse than the 
Frenchman's burlesque of '' John Bull.'' 
(Loud laughter, and no, no.) 

One man is surprised that he speaks such 
good English, another that his complexion is 
so fair, while a third is astonished that his 
leg is not set in the middle of his foot, and 
that his hair, African like, does not take root 
and grow again like the banyan tree. (Laugh- 
ter.) As sands make mountains, drops 
oceans, so do little cuts of ridicule create 
large ^vounds of irritation. Old customs, like 
old shoes, wear too easily to be readily thrown 
aside. Gowns, wigs, queues, the Lord Mayor's 
show^s are prejudices too deep rooted to be 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 107 

lightly cast off. So this constant misrepre- 
sentation of everything American settles in 
the mind of the child, and manhood refuses to 
dispel it. Neglected in infancy, oppressed in 
youth, ridiculed in manhood, yet we are ac- 
cused of over-sensitiveness, of ingratitude, 
our faults exaggerated, but our virtues unex- 
tolled. This is not right. America and Eng- 
land must be friends or foes — like married 
life, either heaven or hell : there is no half 
way. 

Free seas — free thought — free speech — free 
trade — free press are our common heritage : 
both are free in body — free in mind. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Steam, gas, and electricity are the "Li- 
berty, Equality, and Fraternity '^ that mark 
the Anglo-American mind. The steam-whis- 
tle frights the owls that wink and doze the 
livelong day — the gas-light scares away the 
bats and rats of superstition and bigotry — 
while electricity sweeps off the cobwebs, the 
filth and rubbish of ignorance weighed down 
with wealth and vanity propped with titles. 
Knowledge is the antagonist of intolerance. 
Four score years and two have gone since 
mother and daughter separated. Those v/ho 



108 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

fought have passed away — the next genera- 
tion have also departed, and the next are 
grey-haired men. Why should those who 
come later, our fathers, ourselves, our child- 
ren keep alive the old sore ? Days are rip- 
ples in life's sea — years, its heavy swells — 
while centuries are the storm-waves that wash 
away all living things. Almost a century has 
gone — steamships arrive and depart as regu- 
larly as the day ; yet while America knows 
England, how little does England know of 
America. The child never forgets the associ- 
ations of youth ; but the parent sees the child 
married, and knows less of its future life. 

'Tis only a week of generations since the 
pilgrims landed — less than a fortnight of them 
since Columbus crossed the Atlantic — that 
Mediterranean of the West — in an undecked 
boat. Time and tide are ever moving, and 
the mind of man has gone on apace. 

The age of thought — the age of printing — 
the age of steam — the age of electricity is 
upon us. Letters are copied by press, not 
by hand, and chapters of the Bible can be 
sent from missionary at North Pole to hea- 
then at South in minutes by the magnetic 
wire. The sap has ceased to flow from the 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 109 

Asiatic tree of civilization : bamboo and twine 
are still the Chinaman's diamonds. The ship- 
ment of bishops, tracts, missionaries in the 
cabin, while you send opium, cannon balls, 
gunpowder, and rum, in the hold, is as absurd 
as the Malthusian doctrine, that the evils of 
society arise from pressure of population on 
means of subsistence. The Christian child 
knows more than the aged barbarian. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Ideas — not words, telegrams — not epistles, 
action — not talk, mark our day. 

Too much reverence for the past blinds 
judgment, hampers independence, circum- 
scribes originality. English statesmen of the 
Palmerstonian school, ever looking over the 
shoulder, think they can still drown America 
in a drop of ink, and crush her with a wafer. 
(Laughter.) 

Old England, not contented with warring 
with six hundred millions of Buddah-believ- 
ing, Confucius-following Asiatics, thinks she 
can distract the nation's mind from channel 
politics by secretly ordering a dozen or two 
ships overhauled belonging to her blood-rela- 
tions, the Americans. Apologizing to a man 
for slapping him in the face may pacify the 



ilO SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

affronted ; but does not remove the affront. 
If there were one drop of sense in the deluge 
of diplomatic words, we might hope to pluck 
the " nettle danger from out the flower 
safety." Statesmen should not forget that 
when ^sop's eagle stole the flesh from the 
altar, the adhering coal destroyed the nest of 
the royal bird. 

'Tis time that the people of England should 
know the people of America. They are tired 
of seeing the diplomatic viper bite the diplo- 
matic file. Three principles govern man — 
Reason, Love, and Force. Let us try the for- 
mer two, we have had already too much of the 
latter. England may deal with Europe, Asia, 
and Africa as she likes — but she must remem- 
ber that America is a chip of the old block. 
(Hear, hear.) 

India, Australia, Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, 
Perim are some of the stolen gems that orna- 
ment the British Crown. (No, no.) If then 
Columbia casts an admiring eye towards 
Cuba, Central America, Mexico, the Sand- 
wich Islands, 'tis only walking in the foot- 
prints of her illustrious predecessor. (Loud 
laughter.) England is the king of Filibus- 
ters — (Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon rob- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. Ill 

bers, were her models), America thus far is 
but a petty prince ; but when they fihbus- 
ter between themselves, the Devil will be the 
standard-bearer. 

British ideas are culminating in America. Is 
England fearful that the law of gravitation 
applies to nations ? — that the tree decays 
when the scion grows old — that a small leak 
neglected, sinks the large ship ? 

America, remote from the extremes of effe- 
minacy and barbarism — the shackles of des- 
potism and the licentiousness of anarchy — 
undebased by abject poverty and uncorrupted 
by luxurious indulgences — believing in that 
friendship which multiplies joy and divides 
grief — America, once the hunting-ground of 
the savage and home of the wild beast — with 
unborn navies in her forests and in her iron 
mines — now peopled by " a deluge of men 
driven by the hand of God '' — America, a 
joint stock company of independent states — 
without a decayed timber in her constitutional 
ship, gazing on the heaven-kissing monu- 
ments that mark her battle grounds — her 
pyramid of strength just commencing — the 
nation's mind ever working, inventing, dis- 
covering, creating ; America may look upon 



1 12 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Continental Europe, with her monotonous 
treadmill of unrewarded labor, with her de- 
caying soil and tottering institutions ; and so 
long as liberty and humanity continue the 
prey of despotism and cruelty, say to her that 
might makes right only when justice and 
mercy are observed, that war is bankrupt — a 
hopeless insolvent, not even worthy of a third- 
class certificate — that though Greeks, Romans, 
Persians, Goths, Yandals, Norsemen, Saxons, 
Normans, waded through seas of blood, civil- 
ized America and civilized England disdain 
to follow so barbaric an example. Thank God, 
instinct teaches the lion and the eagle not 
to prey upon each other ! (Cheers.) 

The quadruped-walking — hand-looming— 
stone-rolHng East cannot much longer with- 
stand the terrible energy of the wheel-turn- 
ing, electricity-talking, steam-acting West. 
In the former, labor makes man a slave — in 
the latter, man subjects labor. In Europe, 
nature is subservient to man — in Asia, man 
is subservient to nature. The whirl of the 
spindle — the industrious murmur of the 
boiler — the steady groan of the printing- 
press, indicate in the smoke and din of action 
that air and water, fire, steam, and electricity 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 113 

are chained to man's will, and must obey the 
laws of mind over matter. (Applause.) 

The darkness of night, the light of day, 
gaseous fluids, chemical attraction, tena- 
city, elasticity, heaven and earth, land and 
ocean, nature itself acknowledge man, under 
God, their master. Man cannot create mat- 
ter, but man's mind puts matter into mo- 
tion. 

Discovery follows discovery, so rapidly 
that the edge of wonder is blunted by 
famiUarity. It seems but the other day 
since the Royal Society laughed at Frank- 
lin's paper, but shortly after placed the light- 
ning rods on the Royal Palace with blunted 
instead of pointed conductors, rather than 
copy the rebel philosopher. Fourteen years 
elapsed between the sailing of the first two 
Transatlantic steamships ; the Savannah, in 
1819, to Liverpool, and Royal William, in 
1833, from Quebec to London. The Sirius, 
Great Western, Great Britain, and President 
were failures. Cunard, in '38, leased the 
race-course twenty years. But Dr. Lardner 
was right — without government support the 
enterprise would fail. A match in New York 
fires a cannon in China — a word in London 



114 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

takes a loan in Oregon. Aladdin's lamp was 
nothing to the electric battery. Commerce 
and thought have superseded war and theo- 
logy. Watt thought 27,000,000 lbs. steam 
raised one foot high with the combustion of 
a bushel of coals, extreme — now, it has 
reached 100,000,000 lbs. Formerly we 
went to church by postillion, road or canal — 
now by steam, or send regrets by telegraph*. 
The past and present may be typified by the 
snail before the whirlwind. (Applause.) 

The other day, while standing under the 
Pyramid of Ghizeh, which, Herodotus tells 
us, took 100,000 men twenty years to build, 
it occurred to me that four hundred tons of 
Newcastle coal would have elevated the en- 
tire material in as many weeks. Half that 
quantity would send a locomotive round the 
world in less than twenty days. Complete 
the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, and 
you can go from the Hudson to the Missis- 
sippi in forty hours. Lay down the rail to 
California, and you fly over the G-rand Trunk 
line, from ocean to ocean, in five days' time. 
In this age of wonder, the question arises — 
how soon will magnetism and electricity 
supersede coal and steam ? Nature itself is 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 115 

under terrible labor, for electricity is still a 
mystery, and discoveries may be close at 
hand overshadowing all that has gone before. 
Although six thousand years in finding the 
steam-engine, ours may be looked back to as 
darke-ned age. The mysteries of the magnet — 
perpetual motion — why liglit and heat follow 
the sun ? — the contents of water in the ocean 
surge — the quantity of electricity in the 
lightning flash — all these are still marvels 
behind a cloud. Some Carlylean, Emerson- 
ian thinker may soon flash an idea upon us 
which some Newton, Watt, Fulton, Stephen- 
son or Morse may elaborate. Some of the 
greatest inventors of the world never knew 
churches or doctors, universities or profes- 
sors, Latin or Greek, metaphysics or logic. 
Franklin printed ballads before signing con- 
tracts with kings. Who taught Moses ? — 
who Job? Who was Homer's teacher? — 
who Shakspeare's ? The abstract sciences 
were certainly not their preparatory studies. 
Columbus' discoveries were rewarded by 
chains — Scott's conquests earned him a court- 
martial. So the great inventors and bene- 
factors of mankind die poor, while their suc- 
cessors reap the harvest. 



116 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

As the library of the British Museum is 
made out of twenty-six letters, so all that is 
and has been since the experiments in the gar- 
den of Eden has been effected by ringing the 
changes on a few ideas. Hence, on occasions 
like this, a hundred thousand orators are 
ever overhauling the stock heroes, stock 
paintings, stock busts of the age since man 
was born red and died grey, for analogies 
when there is no analogy. The Grreek and 
Roman republics were no more like ours 
than this age resembles theirs. Minerva 
sprang from the head of Jupiter, but Colum- 
bia has risen through space, climate, govern- 
ment to a magnitude that Europe may ask 
with Bulwer, '* What will they do with it?" 
Those republics, those heroes were very re- 
spectable, but very old fogies. The stock 
heroes of the world are but mile-posts on 
the path of knowledge. Archimedes had 
genius, but no fulcrum ; Galileo Galilei's 
opera glass was an electric light to a dark- 
ened era. Carlyle says of a German author 
of little repute now, but the best writer of 
his own time and country: *' He reigned 
supreme, but like the night — in rayless ma- 
jesty and over a slumbering people." Cleo- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 117 

patra drank dissolved pearls, and Yitellius 
ate millions in bird's tongues, but modern 
sovereigns build crystal palaces, and beautify 
their cities with their superfluous change. 
(Applause.) 

Books record all that has been — with ap- 
plication, you can make a museum of the 
brain — a picture gallery of the memory. 
But take results, and you must admit that 
we have Christianized, mechanized, Anglo- 
Saxonized, accomplished more during the 
last quarter of a century than the whole 
eighteen hundred years since the Christian 
era. 'Twas only a few months before the 
battle of Waterloo, that the Times printed 
its first sheet, at the rate of 1,800 copies an 
hour, with self-acting, steam-propelled ma- 
chinery (Greorge Stephenson was working on 
his steam engine at the same time). Apple- 
gath increased the power to 2,400 — but even 
in 1827 the new machines truck off but 4,000. 
But what is its power to-day? Their re- 
porter is present, ask him ? (Applause.) 

America gathers moss with its rolling- 
stone American character is not an imi- 
tatation, but a creation — not a copy, but an 
original. Her power is not in armies nor 



118 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

armadas, but in railroad and schoolmaster — 
imports and exports. The Union's strength 
is in its length, and depth. You may bend, 
but you cannot break it. Cries of disunion 
dissolve like April showers or falling dew. 
When the storm rages, passengers are dis- 
turbed, but the sailors sing merrily and 
work the harder. Europe for three genera- 
tions has called our plan of government a 
failure. But rain may descend, floods 
sweep, winds blow and beat in vain upon a 
Union founded on a rock. (Loud cheers.) 
There may be an occasional family jar 'twixt 
North and South on election days ; but our 
Constitution forbids divorce, and will, so 
long as there is more virtue than vice in 
man. 

America is self-supporting — England is not. 
America goes abroad for luxuries — England 
for necessities. England must have our cot- 
ton, for her people must earn money to buy 
our corn. Like a man on the treadmill, 
England must keep her spindles moving. 
America is altogether — England is every- 
where. America can shut the nation's door 
and fatten on her soil. Close England's gate 
and she must starve. In w^ar, therefore. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 119 

America's loss would be trifling compared 
with England's. 

There are two stages in life — progress and 
decay. Remain stationary, and you descend 
the ladder. The intermarriage of cousins 
destroys intellectual vigor, so the rigid ob- 
servance of hereditary customs diminishes a 
nation's strength. 

America's policy is peace. Thirty mer- 
chants in N'ew York, on an important na- 
tional question, can so act on public opinion as 
to control the executive when wrong. Ame- 
rica has no foreign policy — why ? Because 
she has nothing to back it — too busy to make 
a navy — too much work at home — besides 
too expensive. America despises war — con- 
siders navies and standing armies bad invest- 
ments — they don't pay. Money at ten per 
cent, and war twice a century, shows loss of 
mterest. America is entirely pacific, but, 
following Polonius' advice to Laertes, will 
fight for honor, justice, home, if needful. 
When America becomes the university, the 
machine shop, the play-ground of tax-rid- 
den Europe, she may change her tactics. 

England's weapons were cheap labor — 
cheap money — America has taken out a pa- 



120 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

tent for both. Since the crisis labor has 
fell fifty per cent., so has capital. America 
has abundance of work, abundance of food, 
abundance of schools, cheap living, and con- 
tentment. Ask her to show her fortifications 
and her garrisons ; she will point you to her 
churches, her schools and colleges for the one, 
and her ministers, her scholars and students 
for the other. England should respect her, 
else we must try a curb bit in a gentle way. 
The Cruiser must be Rare(ij)fied. (Laughter.) 
America cannot longer be tied to her mo- 
ther's apron string. She considers example 
better than precept. Our eagle, like your 
lion, goes alone. England's best sermon is a 
good example. America's policy is firmness 
without obstinacy — decision without offence. 
America must be in earnest. An elephant 
on a bridge should show no fear. 

Young America considers the Declaration 
of Independence, the Constitution, Washing- 
ton's farewell address, Yankee Doodle, and 
the Bible, divine institutions. Life, liberty, and 
happiness, are the words in his Book of Life. 
Old England wraps himself in the ' ' Red, White, 
and Blue;" sings "God save the Queen," 
and swears by Magna Charta. The Scrip- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 121 

tures, the my riad- tongue d Shakspeare, and 
Milton, are brave, bold words with both. 
(Applause.) Fearing God — loving truth, lov- 
ing virtue — each should be happy. Shoulder 
to shoulder mstead of back to back, England 
and America muSt ever move on. Two gen- 
erals to one army — two admirals to one 
navy. Sun and moon must both shine. The 
only difficulty is, when two ride the same 
horse, who shall take the back seat ? (Laugh- 
ter.) 

America is imbibing new ideas, new fash- 
ions, new notions. St. Peter's at Rome 
was sixty years in building ; in our day a bet- 
ter structure could be erected in as many 
months. Our millions have been hard at 
work, cutting down forests, making roads, 
building churches, schools, factories, and resi- 
dences. The Young American first bought a 
farm, then built a log-house — sold corn and 
made a railroad, launched a ship, built a mill, 
opened a counting-house and bank, engaged 
clerks, bought a set of books, and is now pre- 
pared to bid for the commerce of the world. 
To-day our population is 29,000,000. The 
same ratio of increase will give us 75,000,000 
in 1900, and 200,000,000 a century hence. 

6 



122 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

America can grow 10,000,000 bales of cotton 
as well as 3,000,000. With no locks— no 
knockers on doors — no latcli strings — no bells 
for visitors, no excise and sedition laws, Ame- 
rica sends her card of invitation to all the 
world, and 4,000,000 accepted and have come 
over since 1844. Stop American cotton by 
war for twelve months, and the starving 
workman would do for the new parliament 
what Cromwell did for the old. 

America is misrepresented in England. 
One point, and I .will make way for more 
eloquent men. One other point, and although 
you may not all agree with me, I can only 
ask a hearing. 

For many years it has been the popular 
belief that America has been using England's 
money. I think we can turn the tables, and 
prove that England has been using America's 
money. (No, no.) 

Hear me for my cause. Take one interest, 
our iron-roads. While you have been build- 
ing your Houses of Parliament, America has 
completed 28,000 miles of railway, costing in 
round numbers £300,000,000 (England's 
9,000 miles have cost the same amount of 
money !) 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 123 

j^ow, during the crisis, the entire debt of 
America to England, government, state, city, 
corporation, raikoad, and individual obliga- 
tions, much of which is not due for ten years, 
was £80,000,000, showing roads paid for by 
ourselves £220,000,000. 

Three per cent, on £80,000,000 is but two 
and a half millions per annum. Reflect and 
you will admit that America has been the 
golden egg. 

Who will pay the best dividends in the 
panic ? America. 

Who grows the cotton which you manufac- 
ture and resell to us ? America. 

Who purchases your rails, your cutlery, 
and your hardware in quantity ? America. 

Who takes your manufactured goods ? 
America. 

The value of ten cargoes of raw material 
you send to us in one of manufactured goods. 

Or let me put it in another shape : 

If England has not got a good share of 
her wealth from America, where has she ob- 
tained it. 

From Canada ? Cobden says not ; but that 
she has been a tax of £2,000,000 per an- 
num. 



124 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

From Australia ? British regiments there 
are paid for out of the British treasury. 

From India? Wait till the £60,000,000 
debt has been added to the national debt of 
England, and the mutiny bills are paid. 

From China ? In 1841 the exports were 
about a million. Seventeen years have gone 
and the exports show no increase, while im- 
ports have augmented from 30,000,000 lbs. 
of tea to 90,000,000 ; from 5,000 bales of 
silk to 95,000. 

From Europe ? Overhaul the disburse- 
ment bills of Wellington at Waterloo before 
you give a decided answer. 

Where then ? — from Greece ? — from Peru ? 
— from Mexico ? — from Spain ? Ask the 
brokers on the Stock Exchange. 

Look over the tables carefully, and you 
will see how grossly in this matter America 
is misrepresented in England— Englismen 
have looked through the eyes of Sydney 
Smith long enough. 

These statements are true or false — right 
or wrong — fact or fallacy. Will some one 
correct me if in error ? Trade knows neither 
friends nor foes ; sell dear, buy cheap, was 
Peel's advice ; America and England divide 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 125 

commissions ; the profits on American trade 
have gone far to pay interest on the national 
debt. 

I mention this to show that, when Ame- 
rica and England lose temper, it is the right 
arm injuring the left. We shall stop the 
engines of the war-steamer with bales of 
cotton, fill the cannon's mouth with tobacco, 
and load the Enfields with corn. (Ap- 
plause.) 

America has been the shirt, pantaloons, 
and coat — everything but the hat and boots 
of John Bull. (Laughter.) 

Take Glasgow — a Baillie Nichol Jarvie in 
size with America, but a lean Rob Roy with- 
out her — while red-faced Daniel Lambert, 
Liverpool, would be reduced to a Calvin 
Edson if deprived of the American trade. 
(Yes.) 

England is the world's heart — its pulsa- 
tions are felt everywhere — seas and rivers 
are the veins, and shed her blood to do 
honor to her ideas. Having for so long fur- 
nished brain for the whole world, she clings 
to old habits. While other lands were open- 
ing their eyes, England worked hard and got 
rich, and always preserved her nationality ; 



126 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 



while Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portu- 
guese colonists intermarried with natives 
and lost their identity. 

Tell an Englishman to improve upon his 
government, he will ask you to gild refined 
gold — color the violet — perfume the rose — 
but hope not to amend the constitution of 
this country. Why, then, should an Ameri- 
can be blamed for having the same feeling of 
national superiority ? (Applause.) 

Dates make the African — rice the Asiatic ; 
but the English and American eat beef — 
hence their iron character. This is an age 
of iron — iron roads, iron bridges, iron 
houses, iron fences, iron ships — nothing but 
the iron will of the iron Duke brought peace 
to Europe by sending Napoleon to St. 
Helena. 

America has followed England abroad, and 
copied her at home so long (we are even 
indebted to an English nobleman for the 
arms on our national seal,); she has faith in 
our continuing the practice — she also had 
faith in the stability of the Indian army, 
when down it tumbled like Disraeli's oppo- 
sition ; faith in the solvency of her finance, 
when Lord Palmerston did for the ''old 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 127 

lady " what Lord John Russell did ten years 
before ; implicit faith in the honesty of her 
coup d'etat special constable of 1848 ; and, 
as shown by the recent right of search move- 
ment, which Mr. Dallas has so eloquently 
told us is forever settled, in the unceasing 
faith and forgiving disposition of the Ameri- 
cans. 

The ocean-spanning telegraph is the re- 
versed rainbow that will bring the welcome 
news to your Queen — 

*' Old England, you are my friend and I am yours." 

" YoTJNG America." 

Four hours before the writing of that de- 
spatch, this reply will be handed to the Pre- 
sident : 

" Columbia— forget and forgive. What God has joined 
together let no man put asunder." 

With the simple addition — 

" What is the price of cotton ? 

" Britannia." 

While the mechanical wire 'pulling of the 
national war frigates has failed to unite us, 
our ambassador tells us that the diplomatic 
wire pulling has been more successful. The 



128 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

news has this moment reached us that while 
nothing could check the Falls of Niagara, 
Agamemnon did not display his usual mag- 
nanimity ! But, like our diplomatic ruptures, 
the suspension must be temporary. We shall 
succeed. (Applause.) 

*' Oh America! America!" said an elo- 
quent son of France, " with thy ' Far West ' 
— with thy prairies without limit — with thy 
forests compared with which ours are but as 
clusters of trees — with thy lakes, vast as our 
seas — with thy cataracts and abysses — Ame- 
rica ! with thy growing industry, with thy 
indomitable spirit of enterprise, and the su- 
perb and insolent daring of thy children — Oh I 
there is in thee, thou new world, in thy new 
race, and thine adolescence of nature, some- 
thing which attracts as the sun, as the future, 
as the mysterious ! From the over-populated 
shores of the old world what thousands of 
desires are directed to thee, thou land bound- 
less and free ! I picture thee to myself, 
America, opening thine arms to the hungry, 
the outcast, the hopeless, and the w^retched 
of all nations, and exclaiming ' Come ye ! 
come ye ! I have space for ye ! I have for 
ye land and sea, and woods and rivers ! I 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 129 

have iron for ye and lead ! I have work, I 
have bread, I have air, and ye may breathe ! 
I have gold and ye may be enriched ! Cast 
off your shoes and shake off the dust of the 
old world ! Come and refresh yourselves in 
the living waters of nature !' '' (Cheers.) 

Again thanking you for your warm-hearted 
expressions of approbation, which are my ex- 
cuse for having encroached upon the ten 
minutes allowed me, will you permit me to 
give the following sentiment : 

'* The Anglo-American, a new edition of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, in a binding peculiar to 
the new world. '^ (Applause.) 



OPINIONS OF THE ENGLISH PRESS. 



(London Times.) 



Mr. Train concluded an eloquent speech 
amidst loud applause. 



6* 



130 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

(From Northern Times, Liverpool, July 1858.) 

YANKEE AND ENGLISH GREATNESS CONTRASTED. 

It is at all times a most refreshing treat 
to peruse the speech of an orator, and an ori- 
ginal thinker. But when the subject is one 
which contrasts England with America, and 
sets forth the amount of dependence which 
each power exercises upon the other, the 
pleasure of hearing or perusing such an ora- 
tion is doubly interesting and attractive. Our 
readers had an opportunity of perusing such 
an oration yesterday. The speech of Mr. G. 
F. Train, at the London dinner, in celebra- 
tion of Independence day, was given in ex- 
tenso, and has no doubt gratified and pleased 
all who have gone through the able and elo- 
quent remarks of the gifted speaker. Mr. 
Train's theme was one that was well calcu- 
lated to draw forth all his powers, viz., 
" Young America and Old England, divided 
in 1776, united in 1858." What mighty re- 
miniscences did these words call forth. A 
history of America and her onward progress, 
and the giant strides she has made as an agri- 
cultural, mechanical, scientific, and commer- 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. ,131 

cial nation. Well indeed might he exult upon 
that progress, and hold up the United States 
to the admiration and envy of the world ! 
The progress of America has been not only 
rapid, but solid and substantial. But pleas- 
ing as were the observations on this head, 
Mr. Train's remarks as to the duty of Ame- 
rica and England towards each other were pe- 
culiarly acceptable, and showed that the orator 
was a Cosmopolite in the real sense of the 
word ; that he loved his native land, but was 
not less sensible to the honor, dignity, and 
power of Britain. He might certainly have 
extolled Young America, and been less sar- 
castic upon British dependence upon the 
United States. It is true we require her cot- 
ton, but our manufactures are no less impera- 
tive for her numerous sons and daughters. 
Hence it is that, as Mr. Train properly re- 
marks, " shoulder to shoulder instead of back 
to back, England and America must ever 
move on. This is a sentiment worthy the 
loftiest statesman of either country. We have 
never perused a speech with more unabated 
interest than the one under consideration. It 
meets the earnest consideration of the people 
of both countries. If liberal and enlightened 



132 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

sentiments like these promulgated by Mr. 
Train were oftener put forward, much and 
lasting good would be the result. Of course, 
we do not indorse all his ideas ; that, how- 
ever, does not prevent us from relishing their 
originality, and asking our readers to ponder 
over all he has to say on the important topics 
which he discussed. 

(Liverpool Albion, July, 1858.) 

'' Express Train.'' — The most intensely 
Yankeefied stump orator of the night (cele- 
bration of American Independence in Lon- 
don) was a gentleman, named Train — (well 
called Express Train by Charles Mackay, who 
came after him.) Answering to the toast of 
Young America, proposed by Mr. Kennard, 
he screwed down the safety valve, poked up 
the fire, and boiled off at a gallop at annihi- 
lating velocity, on the contents of the '* En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica," " Johnson's Diction- 
ary," and other miscellaneous receptacles of 
human knowledge. Charles Mathews, Albert 
Smith, and Spurgeon, rolled into one would 
be a very slow coach indeed beside Train, 
who was at last suddenly pulled up by the 
toastmaster coming from the chairman, and 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 133 

telling him to " cut it short," which Train did 
ere long, but not till he had got a good deal 
further, by which time he had wrought his 
countrymen to the seventh heaven of ecstasy 
with his encomiums on the paradise called the 
United States, and leading them to believe 
that it was quite a mistake on the part of 
the angels to reside in a celestial sphere, 
instead of locating themselves on the Dela- 
ware or Mississippi, and cultivating their 
wings from the Ohio quill market. — London 
correspondence of the Birmingham Journal. 

(Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, July 185S.) 

The celebration of the eighty-second anni- 
versary of American Independence has been 
marked on either side of the British Channel 
by one of those trifles which — in them- 
selves light as air — sometimes excite impor- 
tant comment in reflecting minds. The 
speech of Mr. Train, notwithstanding its rhap- 
sodical character, is faithfully recorded ia all 
the French journals ; and though the minis- 
terial journalists abstain from comment, it is 
evident they consider the delivery of such a 
speech, on an occasion so special, as an inter- 
esting fact. Besides, in stating that England 



134 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

has been and is the king of filibusters — that 
India, Austraha, Gibraltar, Malta, Eden, and 
even Perim are examples of it — Mr. Train 
has uttered a sentiment to which there are 
millions in France who give their assent. 



Correspondence between the Foreign Affairs committee of 
Sheffield, England, and Mr. George Francis Train, of 
America. 

Foreign Affairs Committee, 
Sheffield, July ISth, 1858. 

Sir : This committee have read your 
speech at the '' Anniversary of American In- 
dependence " with deep alarm. 

As a justification of American filibustering, 
you instance the acts of England in stealing 
"India, Australia, Gibraltar, Aden, Perim, '^ 
etc. For these acts England will certainly 
meet, sooner or later, with condign punish- 
ment. The scriptural denunciation and im- 
precation must ring in the ears of every 
honest man: ''Cursed be he who removeth 
his neighbor's landmark, and all the people 
shall say. Amen. Cursed in the city and in 
the field, cursed in basket and store, curst 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 135 

when thou goest out," etc. England by 
these successive acts of piracy has destroyed 
her honor and character, the only true foun- 
dation of a state, and her position is similar 
to that of Rome immediately before its 
downfall. 

It is therefore with deep regret that the 
committee see America following in Eng- 
land's footsteps. If America wickedly per- 
sists in this course, her downfall will be more 
rapid than her rise. 

Let all friends of America remember and 
call upon their Senate to be guided by the 
words of that eminent writer on Interna- 
tional Law, Grotius : ''A people violating 
(even for their profit) the laws of nature 
and of nations, do but pull down the bul- 
wark that secures their own peace and 
safety." 

I have the honor to be, 
Sir, 
Your obedient Servant, 

C. KUTTALL, 

Secretanj. 

Q. F. Train, Esq. 



136 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 



34 Great George Street, Westminster, 

London^ July I5th, 1858. 

My dear Sir : Your courteous letter de- 
serves a prompt reply. 

My remarks at the Anniversary Banquet, 
as you interpret them, may v^ell have oc- 
casioned the comments you have made. 
While, however, confirming what I said, I 
regret the view you take of it. A word of 
explanation is due to you, and will place me 
in a fairer light. My argument was that, 
socially, commercially, financially, politically, 
America was grossly misrepresented in Eng- 
land. By calling plain things by their proper 
names, it was my desire to remove, as far 
as one individual among the millions was 
capable of doing, some of the prejudices 
which have arisen. Let us state one or 
two of them. 

First — Socially. Forgetting that twenty 
years bring changes which are worthy of re- 
spect, the English people continue to see 
America through the very funny, very sarcas- 
tic, and very exaggerating eyes of Marryat, 
Dickens, Trollope, and Punch. 

Truth is more palatable than fiction. Hu- 
manity courts praise if deserving, if not, of 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 137 

course, censure follows. If right, the former 
— if wrong, the latter. As England never 
praises America, the English people naturally 
think the Americans in the wrong. Hence 
the misconception. 

Second — Commercially . England and Ame- 
rica are mutually bound in their trade with 
each other by an annual bond of one hun- 
dred millions sterling to keep the peace. 
The obligation is mutual — not pounds with 
England, pence with America — beams on 
one side, motes on the other — but a Siamese- 
twin relationship ; cut the bond, and both 
suffer. John Bull stands six feet two in his 
own estimation, while Jonathan is but two 
feet six 1 Subtract from John, add to 
Jonathan, and their respective statures will 
be better understood. Palmerston and 
Buchanan are about the same proportions. 
Young America stands equally well with 
Young England. 

Third — Financially. England having look- 
ed through Sydney Smith's spectacles for 
fifteen years, magnifying financial mole-hills 
into financial mountains, I move that she 
smash the reverend gentleman's glasses, and, 
for the future, use her own eyes, so that she 



138 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

may judge freely of a land from which she 
has been enriched. 

Lastly — Politically. Falnierston, Shaftes- 
bury, Brougham, Oxford have sworn the 
horse is "eighteen feet high '^ for so many 
years in the Wilberforcian Emancipation 
Scheme, that they are ashamed to acknow- 
ledge their error. *' Guilty or not guilty ?'' 
asked the judge. " How can I tell till I 
have heard the evidence," responded the 
Irishman. Every day public opinion gives 
evidence against their exploded idea, yet 
they are willing to chance the involving of 
sixty millions of very respectable white people 
in the horrors of war, in order to force the 
execution of their philanthropic plans in 
liberating as many hundred blacks ! 

Consistency is a jewel ! — jewels are rare. 
** To err is human, to forgive divine.'^ Let 
these statesmen own their mistake, and Ame- 
rica will be most forgiving. 

They would sacrifice their oion cousins, the 
Americans, in trying to improve the con- 
dition of their certainly very distant relations, 
the Africans ! To become benefactors of the 
blacks, they would be malefactors of the 
whites ! 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 139 

Public opinion has prepared a mine under 
Exeter Hall, and since the Times has ex- 
amined more clearly American affairs, they 
hold the fuse in their own hands. Prepare 
for a splendid illumination, when the fabric, 
so ancient and honorable, of mistaken philan- 
thropy explodes. 

The above are some of the points, if the 
good people of England will argue fairly, 
and discuss good-naturedly, which will prove 
that America is neither a monster nor a 
myth ! 

Having defined my position, I return to 
your peace platform. In alluding to Eng- 
land's acquisition of India, Australia, Gibral- 
tar, Malta, Aden, Perim, I did not say, nor 
did I recommend, that America should fol- 
low the same course with Cuba, Central 
America, Mexico, and the Sandwich Islands. 
What I did say, was that if America pursued 
a sim.ilar plan, " she would only he following in 
the footsteps of her illustrious predecessor ^ 
That England was the King of Filibusters — 
America but a petty prince. You observe 
where I have been misrepresented. 

When America requires territory, so far as 
the morale is concerned, you may rest assured 



140 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

she will improve upon England's system. 
There^s wide difference between plucMng 
green apples from our neighbor's tree, and ac- 
cepting ripe fruit when they mahe you a pre- 
sent of it. 

A white man and a red man, agreeing to 
divide their game, shot a turkey and a buz- 
zard. Said the former to the Indian, '* You 
take the buzzard, and I'll take the turkey, or 
I'll take the turkey and you take the buz- 
zard." The disgusted hunter simply re- 
marked, " You don't say turkey to me once.'' 
The ancient anecdote illustrates England's 
position towards America when the acquisi- 
tion of territory is the diplomatic theme. 
America is satiated with buzzards and craves 
turkey, and as she is rich enough to be 
generous, she prefers to buy rather than take 
that which belongs to others. America is 
rich, Spain is poor ; when she chooses she can 
turn Cuba into ready money. The quicker 
the better, for the times are changing. 

Again, to the point. Peace at all cost, 
except national honor ; that has been, is 
now, and will continue to be America's pol- 
icy, unless her national rights are trampled 
upon. Our history proves the truth of the 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 1 41 

assertion. {The wars of 1776 and 1812 Eng- 
land admits were just on America's part — 
unjust on England's. The mode of settle- 
ment of the Ashburton Oregon question — 
the Crampton enlistment question — and the 
recent right of search question, proves that 
America was right, England was wrong. 

America never filibusters. She has never 
been, is not now, nor will she ever be, guilty 
of filibustering. 

Was not Texas a part of the old French 
contract for Louisiana, which we r^-annexed 
by consent of the people -? Did not America 
conquer Mexico and then make the Mexicans 
a present of the conquered country ? After 
paying her own expenses, did not the United 
States loan money to the Mexicans for the 
disbursements of their own army ? New 
Mexico and California were received as indem- 
nity for the past and security for the future. 

America never filibusters. The Cuban ex- 
pedition was planned and executed by 
foreigners. Lopez landed in Cuba, our Gov- 
ernment trying in vain to stop him. 

The Xicaraguan expedition was also the 
work of foreigners. The promptness with 
which the American Government (exceeding 



142 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

the neutrality laws) arrested Walker and his 
followers, and brought them back to the 
United States, should convince you that 
America never filibusters. 

Dickens says, " all right, ^^ in England, 
signifies "go ahead ''^ in America; in some 
respects he may be right, but not on the 
filibustering question. 

If I have succeeded in convincing you that 
America's policy is pacific, not filibustering, 
that the object of my remarks, on the Anni- 
versary of American Independence, at the 
London Tavern, was to show how unfair it is 
for England to misrepresent their blood re- 
lations, the Americans — I say, if I have suc- 
ceeded in either of these things, I am satis- 
fied. 

I believe with your Society, and with 
Channing, that " War is a great moral evil" 
— that " the field of battle is a theatre got 
up at immense cost for the exhibition of 
crime on the grandest possible scale," I 
consider that a soldier is a live target, put up 
by one nation for another to shoot at. This 
was so in the beginning, is now, and will 
ever be. Nothing can be more praiseworthy 
than your efforts to pacify the world. To 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 143 

make war, nations Must have money ; but 
if you expect everlasting peace, you must 
prevail upon the Rothschilds, Barings, Hopes, 
and Steiglitzs of the world to cut off the 
supplies. Stop the pay, and soldiers and 
sailors must keep shops or go to farming. 

Thanking you to point out where we dis- 
agree, you must believe me, 
Most respectfully, 

My dear Sir, 
Your obedient servant, 

George Francis Train. 

C. Ndttall, Esq , 
Secretary of the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs^ Sheffield. 



Foreign Affairs Commitee, 
Sheffield, July 29th, 1858. 

Sir : This Committee did not write to you 
with the expectation of entering into a dis- 
cussion on the subject of America. They 
addressed you in a solemn manner, on a most 
solemn subject, and they expected a very 
different reply from that they have received. 

An answer to your letter would be sure to 
result in a lengthy and useless discussion. 



1 44 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

If the Committee possessed any desire for 
such a discussion, they feel they would be 
neglecting their duty in gratifying it. Their 
time must be devoted to the saving of Eng- 
land from nets which have been prepared for 
it by a Russian Cabinet and an English 
statesman, and of which this and many other 
similar Committees have, through laborious 
study, made themselves acquainted with. 
I have the honor to remain, 
Sir, 
Your obedient Servant, 

C. NUTTALL, 

Secretary, 

G. F. Train, Esq., 

etc. etc. etc. 

P.S. — We are not, as you imagme, a so- 
ciety that calls for peace at any price — we 
only protest against unlawful warfare. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 145 

(From the London Times.) 

THE UNITED STATES. 

To the Editor of the Times : 

' We had planted thirteen colonies in that 
country ; those colonies had declared their 
independence, and had since increased to 
the number of thirty-five or thirty-six free 
States.'^ 

Again, 

''In the meantime the Americans had in- 
creased from thirteen to thirty-six independ- 
ent States " — Extract from the Times^ report 
of Mr. Roebuck's speech on the Hudson's Bay 
Company. 



Sir : "Will you permit me to hand you the 
inclosed list of States now composing the 
American Union, the publication of which 
may dispel any doubt as to their number ? 

Name. By whom Settled. Date. 

Virginia The English 1607 

New York The Dutch 1614 

Massachusetts The Puritans 1620 

New Hampshire The Puritans 1623 

1 



146 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Name. By whom Settled. Date. 

New Jersey , The Dutch " 1624 

Delaware Swedes and Danes. . . 1627 

Maryland Irish Catholics 1635 

Connecticut The Puritans 1635 

Rhode Island Roger Williams 1636 

North Carolina The English 1650 

South Carolina The Huguenots 1670 

Pennsylvania "William Penn 1682 

Georgia The English 1733 

The "Declaration of Independence " of the 
above (the origmal) thirteen States was made 
on the 4th of July, 1776. 

** Articles of Confederation and Perpetual 
Union of the United States of America " were 
agreed to by State delegates on the 15th of 
November, 1777. 

Articles ratified by eight States on the 9th 
of July, one ditto on the 21st of July, one 
ditto on the 24th of July, and one ditto on 
the 26th of IS'ovember, 1778 ; one ditto on 
the 22d of February, 1779 ; and the last one 
on the 1st of March, 1781. 

Constitution went into operation, and first 
Congress held at Federal Hall, New York, on 
the 4th of March, 1789 ; Washington entered 
on Presidential duties on the 30th of April, 
1789. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 147 

When admitted 
Name. into Union. 

Vermont 1791 

KentQcky 1T92 

Tennessee 1796 

Ohio 1802 

Louisiana 1812 

Indiana 1816 

Mississippi 1817 

Illinois 1818 

Alabama 1819 

Maine 1820 

Missouri 1821 

Arkansas 1836 

Michigan 1837 

Florida 1845 

Texas 1845 

Iowa 1846 

Wisconsin 1847 

California 1850 

Minnesota 1858 

Kansas (conditionally) 1858 

Making 33 States, instead of 36, as mentioned 
by Mr. Roebuck. 

Oregon, Washington, Utah, New Mexico, 
and Nebraska are represented in Congress as 
Territories, not yet having been organized 
as States. Arizona also waits outside. 
Most respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

GrEORGE FrANCIS TrAIN. 

34 Gekat Geokge Steeet, Westminstee, 
Jvly 21si. 



148 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

Remarks made at a Public Meeting held at Mansjield, Ohio, 
Nov . 1858, to meet the President^ Directors, and Agents 
for Foreign Bondholders of the Atlantic and Great Wes- 
tern Railroad — Judge Barlley in the chair. 

From childhood I pictured in my fancy 
the sunny skies and fair gardens of Italy, and 
poets, painters, sculptors, ancient heroes grew 
in my young imagination to such uncouth 
sizes, that when I went to Rome, the vision 
vanished, and I came away disgusted — dis- 
gusted that Americans should ever ring the 
praises of a land so far inferior to their 
own. 

Those who have so eloquently preceded 
me have introduced my name with so many 
words of commendation — saying so many flat- 
tering things for "Young America" — that I 
fear you will be greatly disappointed. 

Judge Bartley knows the enterprise, and 
he ought to be a good judge. (Laughter.) He 
tells you that everybody is in earnest, and 
that at last you are to have a road. 

General Ward ventilates the subject with 
his usual toast, turning it on every side, and 
showing off its points as he knows so well how 
to do. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 149 

Mr. Kennarcl, whose name preceded him 
as an eminent engineer, has plainly told you ; 
that he believes the road one that bids fair to 
be the best in the country. 

Mr. Doolittle speaks as he contracts, with 
knowledge and with ability. Succeeding in 
all his other roads, he feels his strength, and 
tells you that in this he knows no such word 
as fail. 

The Directors, each in turn, have enter- 
tained you with their experience and opin- 
ions ; yet, notwithstanding, the aforesaid 
speakers have covered all the ground in the 
argument — surveyed the line — completed ex- 
cavations — furnished grading — built bridges 
— ballasted road — placed sleepers, and laid 
down rails (I was going to say, done all the 
heavy work) — they call upon me at the last 
hour as a kind of accommodation Train ! 
(Laughter.) 

Now is it fair to ask me to speak on a 
theme after a dozen speakers have chosen all 
the strong points, and exhausted the entire 
question, leaving me absolutely nothing to 
say? 

What am I to talk about ? I can make a 
speech on any question at two minutes' no- 



150 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

tice ; but in this case, name your subject, for 
it seems to be a settled thing that I am to 
talk to you. 

If I commence saying how much I think of 
the West, how astonished I am at its hercu- 
lean growth, how ennobling is its wonderful 
activity, you will call me a politician ; and 
never having voted — nor taken sides — nor 
talked politics, that would be indeed too bad. 
(Laughter.) No matter, I shall talk about 
those western lands. I am full of admiration at 
the terrible energy that has swept forests from 
the Indian's hunting-ground, and built up 
such gigantic cities over the footprints of the 
red man's moccasin. 

Something strikes me anew at every turn. 
When I see so many towns and cities born 
in a single generation, I may need lose my- 
self in amazement in reflecting on the fu- 
ture. 

Men of the West, I look upon you who 
have hewn your pathway through woodlands 
into populous cities, as the heroes of the 
country. 

You have taken away not only the larger 
part of our capital, but have also been drain- 
ing us of our brains. Observation has pointed 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 151 

out one thing — you haye, in this part of the 
country, magnificent heads, but shocking hats 
— (roars of laughter) — rusty-looking gar- 
ments, but herculean frames. 

The inner, not the outer man commands 
your respect — worth makes the man, and he 
who had the moral courage to leave his east- 
ern home, and with that peculiar-shaped axe 
(which Talleyrand, in Xew England, said would 
hew a nation out of the western world), on 
shoulder, penetrates into the western wilder- 
ness, and with nothing but the light of heaven 
above, nothing below but the hum of insects, 
the song of birds, the chirping of squirrels — 
nothing but the denizens of the forest, and 
the whistling of winds through the branches 
to cheer him on his manly task ; the man 
who, in this hermit solitude, strikes home his 
axe into the hard wood, and chip by chip 
cuts him down a tree;, the fall echoing and 
reechoing like an avalanche — then another 
and another till he has cleared himself a farm 
and built him up a log cabin ; that man whose 
energy and industry chains him to the soli- 
tary spot till other cabins spring up around, 
and by and by he sees about him a school- 
house, a college and a church — I say, that man 



152 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

whose strength of body and force of mind re- 
mains digging in the soil till the little town- 
ship widens and embraces a city, and a city 
hke Cincinnati with its 240,000 citizens — 
yes, that man whose patience and persever- 
ance has accomplished all this in his day and 
generation, possesses all the elements of the 
hero ! (Loud applause.) 

Were he a soldier he would have crossed 
the bridge of Lodi — or faced the guns at Bala- 
klava. As a statesman he would have been 
a Chatham or a Metternich — so, as the axe- 
man of the backwoods, he has worked out 
the destiny of his race. (Applause.) 

Keeping the commandments, he is a 
greater man than Moses — till he kills an 
Egyptian and takes jewels that belong to 
others ; and having been faithful to one 
wife, he is a wiser and better man than 
Solomon. (Laughter.) 

Can you believe for a moment that men 
who have done so much have not the force to 
finish a railway ? 

Are you tired ? (No, go on.) Do you 
really wish me to go on ? (Yes.) On what ? 
(On the railway.) Yery well ; just ring the 
bell when you wish to shut off steam 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 153 

(laughter), for I like this stump speaking, 
and under the stimulating influence of your 
enthusiasm, I could run all night without 
getting off the track. 

Well, I am delighted with the road, and I 
am convinced that it is one of the roads ; 
foot by foot we have gone through New 
York State — through Pennsylvania (which 
the general says was most unjustly abused 
by Sydney Smith), and so far on our journey 
through Ohio, and most gladly assure you, 
we have found the statements made by your 
president and Mr. Doolittle accurate in every 
particular. 

They have underrated its merits because 
they did not appreciate its value. 

We have been three weeks on the way, 
through snow and hail and muddy roads, 
with all storm and no sunshine ; but to-night 
the winter of our discontent is made glorious 
summer by this most enthusiastic reception ! 
(Applause.) 

This crowded — this cheering audience 
gives the lie to the base slander that there 
was no life along the line. Why, gentlemen, 
you cannot credit the calumnies that were 
circulated against the railway on the other 



154 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

side the sea. 'Twas no manly opposition, 
but the backhanded stroke of the Thug. 

One man called it the fifth wheel of a 
coach. (I intimated that it would be useful 
in case the fourth wheel wanted repairing, and 
that I saw a fifth wheel on all the artillery 
wagons in the Crimea.) (Laughter.) 

Another said, we might as well build a 
railway to the moon ! (Why not, if it would 
pay?) 

Some said there were too many roads al- 
ready in Ohio, forgetting that the leading 
lines from the West to East passed directly 
through the State. They forgot that it was 
in the middle — a toll-gate for the States on 
both sides — a half-way station. 

They forgot that Ohio, with 2,350,000 
population, has but 2,800 miles of railway — 
while Illinois has 2,600, with only 1,500,000 
inhabitants ! 

Others testified that we had no charter — 
no survey — no subscriptions — no grading — 
no money paid in — nobody knew the direc- 
tors, and that everybody repudiated the 
affair along the line. All of which I have 
found unqualified falsehoods. (Applause.) 

On the contrary, we find a comparatively 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 165 

level country — fine grazing and agricultural 
lands — neat farms — trim cottages — growing 
villages and flourishing cities — we find all 
hands on deck — all wide awake. 

We have had meetings like this in village 
after village, and the Pennsylvanians already 
have subscribed over $300,000 in place of 
the Crawford County Bonds — all are for the 
road — we have not heard one dissenting 
voice. Are there any here who wish to give 
up the ship ? (No.) 

Will you pay the balance of your subscrip- 
tions ? (Yes, and as much more.) 

This, Mr. Chairman, does not look like re- 
pudiation ! and this is the way that we have 
been met from day to day. 

At Akeon the millers met us and were pre- 
pared to enter into an annual contract with 
us take all their flour over our road to the 
eastern market. They make 1,500 barrels 
per day ! 

The drovers wait upon us and say that the 
narrow gauge is not the thing for cattle — but 
as water and fodder find ample room in the 
broad gauge car, they would not only send 
their cattle, but would pay better prices to 
get them to market over a road where there 



156 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

were so many pastures for feeding. They 
are tired of sending cattle forty-eight hours 
without food. 

The farmers met us and complained of hav- 
ing to cart their butter, their cheese, their 
corn and their fruit, their sheep, their hogs 
and their timber, all the way to the lake for 
want of a nearer outlet. All indorsed the 
road. 

The howling of the malcontents has 
ceased. 

''Who is dead?" asked a gentleman of a 
chapter and verse Hibernian. 

'' 1 don't know,'' said Paddy, " but sup- 
pose it is the gentleman in the coffin !" 
(Loud laughter.) 

There I think is where you will find the 
opposition. 

Shall I continue ? (Yes.) But there are 
other speakers to entertain you. There is 
Bob Schenck, the eight-year M. C. — the 
Minister to Brazil — who I heard compli- 
mented at Melbourne, Australia, by Sir 
Charles Hotham, when envoy to Brazil. At 
that time I did not expect to met him in the 
West. 

There is Sherman, your member of Con 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 15*7 

gress, whom I last sawjat the dinner given at 
Washington last winter, to the poet editor 
Mackay. 

Those men are born speakers, and I am 
already crowding them for time. (No, no, 
go on ; tell us more about the railway.) 

All right — consider me yours for ten 
minutes more, and when I get too fast put 
on the brakes. (Laughter.) 

I am only surprised that the road was not 
finished years ago — for look at the map and 
you must admit that the Atlantic and Great 
Western is the Grand Trunk Line — others 
are but branches. This is the backbone — the 
other lines are but ribs. We seem to hold 
all the trumps and all the honors. 

Let me show you some strong points in its 
favor. The Lake Shore stock is quoted at 
$130, and bonds cannot be bought. The road 
has never paid less than 20 per cent, (in one 
instance it touched fifty). 

Now does it not stand to reason that if 
that road shows 20 per cent., a line built 
directly alongside, by dividing the traffic un- 
der same tariff" of prices, would pay 10 per 
cent., and ten per cent, is not a bad invest- 
ment. 



158 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

That line, you are aware, has nothing but 
the lake on one side, and passing through a 
sparse pojDulation, naturally little local traffic ; 
yet observe the dividend. 

What, then, is a road likely to pay thirty 
or forty miles south of the shore, where the 
population on the line is equal to that of 
New Hampshire and Yermont, which States 
have 1,100 miles of railway, while you have 
not a single rail ? 

Again, passengers prefer the broad gauge. 
The cars are wider — the motion more agree- 
able. Besides, you can move five miles an 
hour faster with less danger, thereby reduc- 
ing the already most direct route from the 
Hudson to the Mississippi 200 miles. 

Traffic moves East and West — not Korth 
and South. 

Passengers go from Atlantic towards 
Pacific. Westward moves the star of em- 
pire, ever westward. 

Complete this middle link, and you have 
a grand national broad gauge road from the 
Liverpool of the East, New York, to the Lon- 
don of the West, St. Louis, twelve hundred 
miles, making the largest railway in the world ! 

Arrangements will be made with the 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 159 

North Atlantic Packet Line to book freight- 
and passengers from Continental Europe and 
Great Britain direct to St. Louis. When the 
ships arrive at Jersey City, the New York and 
Erie cars pass them on to the Atlantic and 
Great Western, when the Hamilton and Day- 
ton take them to Cincinnati, where the Ohio 
and Mississippi are ready to deposit them in 
St. Louis. Onward still they move ! Already 
180 miles of the Pacific road are completed 
west of St. Louis, and later on, under the 
rapid march of American energy, it will 
touch the Western Ocean ! 

Then comes consolidation of companies — 
till the Atlantic and Pacific road bridges a 
continent. The most gigantic enterprise on 
the face of the globe ! (Loud applause.) 

But come back to our argument. 

Suppose a New Yorker is bound to Mis- 
souri. Trace him up the Hudson — change 
cars for ferry-boat, then take cars for Buffalo. 
Just as you are comfortably seated, change 
cars for Cleveland ! — out you pack again, 
with shawls and carpet-bags — change cars 
for Cincinnati ! — arrived there, wife and 
babies (if you are so fortunate as to possess 
those Christmas presents of a family man), 



160 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

must be again trotted down with — change 
cars for St. Louis ! (Laughter.) 

Kow I ask of you, who would hesitate for 
a moment as to route ? 

Will you go round about, ever changing, 
or take the lightning train ? 

The forty-hour express — the broad gauge 
line, where you need not take your shawl or 
carpet-bag from the seat you took at New 
York, till you arrive at St. Louis. 

Of course, eastward passengers bound 
West, or western people going East, will 
naturally choose that route which gives the 
greatest speed with the most comfort for the 
least money. 

Are the northern and southern lines afraid 
of competition ? 

Buy a trunk ? said the merchant to the 
emigrant. What for ? asked Pat. 

" To put your clothes in." 

•'To put me clothes in — what," said he, 
and go nake-ed !" (Laughter.) 

Do the other companies fear that, now the 
Grand Trunk is to be finished, that they will 
go nake-ed 1 (Loud laughter.) 

No — there is room for all — live and let live, 
Fair play — that is the policy of manliness. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 161 

We have never decried our neighbor's pro- 
ject to bolster up our own ; such niggardly 
conduct is unworthy and debasing. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Our road stands on its sterling merits. 

How long have I been on my legs ? My 
best arguments are still behind. (Go on, it's 
only ten o'clock.) 

I was showing how the broad gauge would 
catch the passengers. How much more so 
would it control the freight ? 

Break of gauge reduces capacity of road. 

Continued changes increase cost ; price de- 
cides freight ; no change reduces rate. Be- 
sides, shippers would pay more when satisfied 
that their goods will not be knocked from car 
to car — so often broken in the transit. 

Freight and passengers passing East or 
West feed our road. For, as a leading iron 
master said to me in London : *' Your road 
is the neck of the bottle." 

*' Yes,'' said I, "like the funnel of a tun- 
nel — without a tunnel^ a long bridge or 
heavy embankment. 

We take the tolls ; like the throat of a 
man, we can tax all that passes our way ! 

Take your map, and see if this road will 



162 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

not catch much of the European imports to 
St. Louis, via New Orleans. 

Cost and speed will rule it — a straight line 
will overshadow a triangular route. 

It's an important connection for New 
York. 

The Erie was opened by the President of 
the United States, amid gun-firing, band- 
playing, and speech-making, so national was 
the feeling. How much more national is it 
to finish the enterprise. 

De Witt Clinton surveyed the route thirty 
years ago : read his report. Look again at 
the map. No wonder the New York and 
Erie and Ohio and Mississippi Companies are 
so anxious to see our road completed, for the 
connection is of vital import to both those 
roads. 

Their stockholders and bondholders should 
be made aware of the life that this middle 
link will throw into those high costing opera- 
tions. The New York and Erie saw its im- 
portance at the start, and contracted to give 
the Atlantic and Great Western ten per 
cent, of gross receipts, both ways, for five 
years. 

The Broadway omnibuses usually pass the 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 163 

New York Hotel full, so our road, commenc- 
ing at New York, or St. Louis, picks up pas- 
sengers on the route, and crosses our road 
with full cars. The same applies to freight. 

Passengers pay best because they load and 
unload themselves. 

Through traffic requires less handling, 
hence decreased expenses and increased divi- 
dends. 

We shall try and make net receipts, not 
gross. 

We did not come over to build your road 
on principles of benevolence and charity, but 
to make as much money as possible out of 
you in the shortest possible time. Our con- 
tracts represent bonds, not stock, yet bonds 
should be optionally convertible, as 20 per 
cent, is better than 7 per cent. 

We- are glad to find most of the heavy grad- 
ing done ; nature has built the road — like the 
Illinois Central, in some cases you can lay 
down your rails on top of the grass. (Laugh- 
ter.) 

Our contracts were too binding to be 
broken by a breath of editorial wind, or bank- 
ing-house envy. McHenry made his arrange- 
ments with Salamanca, two of the ablest men 



164 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

in Europe. Two cargoes of iron are already 
in ISTew York, and two installments of money 
are here, and I have bills of lading in my 
pocket of five more cargoes on the way. This 
warm indorsement of your Directors was not 
needed, yet such unanimous sentiments of 
earnestness ever insure success. 

Associations make presidents, build rail- 
ways, and create nations. 'Tis nature's law. 
Trees grow in forests ; birds go in flocks ; 
animals in herds ; fish in shoals ; insects in 
swarms ; so men, each working in concert, 
accomplish great results. Shoulder to shoul- 
der, you could have built your road without 
a penny from abroad ; a short pull, a long 
pull, and a pull altogether would have done 
it. 'Tis the steady tramp of regiments that 
bears down the bridge. 'Twas the steel 
square of Wellington that made England's 
glory. But I for one am glad you came 
abroad for assistance. If you are satisfied in 
taking the money and iron, so are the capi- 
talists of England France and Spain in fur- 
nishing it. 

I am satisfied the road must pay. 

'' Are you the mate," asked a passenger of 
the cook. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 1 65 

'* No, sir-r ! I am the man what cooks the 
mate," was the prompt reply. (Laughter.) 

There's plenty of mate m the colonel of our 
road. 

In roaming through all the hemispheres, I 
have seen the ploughshares in the field, but 
have yet to find land that equals the natural 
wealth of this nation's soil. 

Nature's banks never refuse to answer to 
their deposits — they pay compound interest 
every crop. 

Way-worn, and body-worn, and carriage- 
worn, with more words shed than ink shed, 
we have made our way over the road, look- 
ing at your strange seven-rail fences ; your 
ornamental stump hedges, as peculiar as your 
stump orators ; your log-cabins, as national 
as your log-rolling, till we have been con- 
vinced that your political ironical railings, will 
soon be changed into a practical iron railway. 
(Laughter.) 

Some giant flood must have covered this 
land. No little affair like that Araratian 
deluge, which cut through the Dardanelles 
and Bosphorus, lowering the Caspian and 
Black Seas, and raising the Mediterranean, 
but some hemispherical upheaving of the 



166 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

waters — one wave making the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and another the Alleghanies, giving a 
thousand miles of Mississippian Yalley to 
raise corn for all the world. A portion of 
the water passed down the great river to the 
Mexican gulf. The balance, after filling up 
the lakes, went to the Atlantic via the St. 
Lawrence. 

Lake Erie was concaved to convex the land 
in Ohio. Hence this wonderful plateau, ex- 
pressly made for the Atlantic and Great Wes- 
tern Railway. (Loud applause.) 



Remarks to the Scholars of the High School, Cleveland ^ 
Ohio, December, 1858. 

The first inquiry I made on arriving in 
your city this morning, was in regard to your 
Common School system, and I am under 
many obligations to the kind friends who have 
so promptly brought me here. 

There is a charm about the school-house 
that manhood's associations cannot shake 
away. Schoolboy impressions are lasting. 

Life's storms seldom sever acquaintances 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 167 

formed and friendships made during those 
happy years. 

I love my schoolday memories, and having 
looked in upon the scholars of Asia, of Aus- 
tralia, of Africa and of Europe, I was curi- 
ous to see the school system of the West. 

Your Superintendent asks me to address 
you — most gladly I answer to the call ; but 
what am I to say ? 

Like yourselves, I am still a scholar, but a 
few years your senior, and to tell you that I 
would be more studious had I again the 
chance, would be simply reechoing what all 
say who have passed the Rubicon of youth. 
Were you to ask my advice, it would be 
study — study, and study hard. 

You should play hard when you play, 
which expands the physical frame, so that you 
may study hard when you study, to expand 
the mental. 

The galvanic battery in the stomach re- 
sponds to the electric-telegraph in the brain. 
Physical exercise is essential to mental 
strength. 

Wo more absurd idea can be promulgated 
than, that a child will injure itself by study. 
Fever fear. The case is a rare one where a 



168 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

delicate body is broken by an active mind — 
nature takes care of that. 

If the mind gives way, 'tis because the body 
has been idle. Both must be active to give 
each force. 

Therefore, by all means study, and study 
as though you meant it — whatever you do, 
follow the advice of Sheridan Knowles in your 
school-books. — Be in earnest. 

Your teacher apologizes for your voices not 
reaching across the room. There is no ex- 
cuse for it ; were it recess your laugh could 
be even heard on the other side the square. 
Then you are in earnest. 

Why don't you read with the same en- 
thusiasm ? 

All the world are not interested — yet you 
hesitate as if the nations depended on the 
trial. 

Boys, when you snow-ball you enjoy it. 
You try to hit and get warm in the play. 
Why don't you read with the same life ? 

When you kick foot-ball, you show force — 
when you play base, you bat with energy — 
when you run, you do it with a will — when 
you jump — no matter what your play — you 
act as if in earnest. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 169 

Why not recite your lessons that way ? 
Reflect on what I tell you ; let these words 
be ever in your mind — Be i?i earnest. 

Those young girls show more enthusiasm 
when they buy a bonnet. They l-dy down 
the law with their little hands to the mil- 
liners as if their future happiness depended 
on the purchase. The ribbons must be ar- 
ranged so — the flowers in this manner — the 
laces in that — and by four o^clock they must 
have it sent home. Then they are in earnest. 

You should display similar action with 
your school-books. Your grammar lesson 
should claim equal attention ; you should be 
in earnest. 

There is one thing I have noticed in 
talking with mankind. Every scholar feels, 
at some period of his youth, an intuitive 
knowledge of power over his 'neighbor — some 
instinctive feeling of strength — some internal 
consciousness of doing something better than 
his school-fellow. It may be physical supe- 
riority, it may be mental — poetry, perhaps, 
or music ; it may be history or mathematics 
— no matter what the faculty, 'tis a strange 
thing that father and mother cannot see it ; 
brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins, 

8 



170 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

school-mates, no immediate relative or friend 
detects any virtue in the genius — the talent, 
force, whatever it may be ; on the contrary, 
these kind jailers of our actions strive to 
crush out the spark, for fear of ridicule, or 
some other motive, thereby often blasting 
the ambition as with a mildew. 

Stop that piano — don't laugh so loud — 
cease that singing. You cannot write 
poetry. Don't make a fool of yourself. 
Everybody is laughing at you. This is the 
usual encouragement for enthusiasm, and 
genius often tries in vain to struggle through 
the net- work. 

Scholars, if any of you have been thrown 
off the track by advice, go back again. 
Don't give it up. 'Tis the strong point of 
your life. If based on a moral platform, 
it will lift you to your proper mark. 

Think well of yourselves. 'Tis the way to 
command respect. If you assume too much 
you will find your level. Water will not 
run up hill. Holmes says, that when you 
drive your wagon of potatoes in a spring- 
cart over a rough road, he observes that the 
small potatoes always go to the bottom. 
Small logs get under large ones in the pond. 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 171 

Large stones work through the smaller ones 
to the surface on the swampy highway. 

Strike high. Know yourself, and always 
be in earnest. Look upward. 

On a long range the hunter aims above 
the mark to hit it. 

To get ten thousand dollars for your house 
you ask twelve, else they wish to buy for 
eight. Make your mark high. There is 
nothing like a noble ambition. 

Your friends, in showing you your weak 
points, are oblivious to your strong points. 

The black sheep is always seen in the 
flock. If the coffee is cold, no matter how 
hearty the breakfast, you don't like the hotel. 

When three thousand people have cheered 
3-0U, some friend will kindly inform you that 
he heard some say that you had made a fool 
of yourself. 

"I saw 'derisive cheers' marked against 
3'our speech," said a friend. 

"Yes," I observed, "but they were 
cheers, weren't they ?" 

Make up your mind what you intend to 
do and do it. Never fail to try. 

Hold on — don't give up. 



172 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

" Stick to your aim — the mongrel's hold will slip, 
But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip ; 
Small as he looks, the jaw that never yields, 
Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields." 

Perseverance and will must accomplish. 

Look at the mountains, your ideas become 
enlarged — mole hills lessen your conceptions. 

If you gaze on shrubs, your ideas become 
shrubby. But look at oaks and your ideas 
become oaky. 

Step by step, thought by thought, you 
can gain the prize. Study, and do it as ear- 
nestly as you eat. 

*' The giant pyramids of stone 

That wedge-like cut tlie desert airs, 
"When nearer seen and better known 

Are but gigantic pairs of stairs. 
The distant mountains that uprear 

Their solid bastions to the skies, 
Are crossed by footpaths that appear 

When we to higher levels rise. 
The heights which great men reached and kept, 

Were not attained by sudden flight. 
But they, while their companions slept. 

Were toiling upward in the night." 

I have great faith in your learning the 
simple branches before going beyond your 
depth in metaphysics. 

I would have a scholar read well, and spell 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 173 

well, understand the English grammar, geo- 
graphy, history, writing. I would have these 
studies well grounded in the mind, before 
taxing the brain with the higher flights of 
mathematics and the dead languages ; such 
studies are comparatively useless to the ma- 
jority of minds. 

This studying Latin ten years, as a key to 
languages, or to discipline the mind, has be- 
come irksome. Our age is too practical for 
such nonsense. Nine out of ten get nause- 
ated, and the memory throws it overboard 
without a pang. 

French, Spanish, German, are useful, and 
the mind's discipline is equally strong. 

No man can quote Latin in society without 
being called pedantic ; and I assure you, I 
have never seen it in my travels, except on 
apothecaries' bottles. It is time to change 
the theoretical stage-coach style of education 
for the steam-engine practicability of the age. 

We dwell in the past as though our day 
was unworthy of its birth. 

Caesar, with his bow and arrow, is distorted 
into a greater man than Scott with his mini6 
rifle. 

Demosthenes deserves credit for trying to 



1 74 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

clear his throat with pebbles, but I hope that 
none will compliment you or me by saying 
that we have adopted his model. 

These stock heroes have grown from Ro- 
man paving-stones into Bunker Hill monu- 
ments. 

When in our day we see a senator's speech 
trimmed up, revised, corrected for the 
papers, and then rearranged a generation 
later to suit the times, and before the genera- 
tion is dead, changed perhaps again, one can 
but have fears that very little of the original 
remains in orations almost two thousand years 
of age. 

Know yourself — therein is power. 

Scholars, I am glad I know you. 

I wish I knew you better, and that you 
knew me better. I should like to play with 
you when you play, and study with you when 
you study. I would arouse you from idle- 
ness, and make you work. 

I would appeal to your ambition. 

There may be some future President sit- 
ting on these benches — some large-brained 
boy — who only needs commendation to light 
the embers of his mind. 

Young Americans ; you by and by will be 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 175 

the city fathers — the rulers of the State ; 
make j^ourselves worthy of the chance. 

There may be here the mother of a Wash- 
ington, a Napoleon, a Pitt. 

'Tis the mothers that make the men. 

Now is the hour for improvement — know- 
ledge is power — do not waste the moments. 

Read ! Reflect ! Remember ! 

Keep your ears — your eyes open ; notice 
all that passes, and strive to excel. 

Little by little . you can accomplish any- 
thing. 

The dropping of water drills the hardest 
stone. 

Where there's a will there's a way. 

Little by little you have built up this beau- 
tiful city, little by little you have perfected 
your common school system. 



" Little ly little^ an acorn said, 
As it slowly sank in its mossy bed, 
I'm improving every day — 
Deep hidden in the earth av^ay. 
Little by little it sipped the dew — 
Little ly little each day it grew ; 
Downward it sent out a tiny root, 
Upward there spraEg a threadbare shoot. 
Day by day, and year by year, 
Little ly little the leaves appear, 



176 SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 

And the slender trunk spreads far and wide, 
Till the giant oak is the forest's pride, 

" Far down in the depths of the deep blue sea, 
An insect train works ceaselessly ; 
Grain by grain it is building well — 
Each one alone in its little cell. 
Moment by moment, and day by day, 
Never stopping to rest or to play, 
Rocks upon rocks it is mounting high, 
Till tlie top looks out on the sunny sky ; 
And the gentle wind and the balmy air, 
Little by little bring verdure there, 
Till the summer sunbeams gaily smile 
On the buds and flowers of the coral Isle. 

"Little by little, said a thoughtful boy, 
Moment by moment Til well employ. 
Learning a little every day, 
And not spending all my time in play. 
"While in mind this truth shall dwell — 
Whate'er I do, TU do it well ; 
Little by little I'll strive to know 
The treasured knowledge of long ago. 
And one of these days, perhaps, will see 
The world is all the letter for we." 

Choose- your path, and keep to it. 

I would rather be that Excelsior boy dying 
in the snow, than not to have made the trial. 

I shall long remember my visit to the 
schools of Ohio, and shall feel deeply glad 
should some among you remember me in re- 
turn. In thanking you for permitting me to 



SPREAD-EAGLEISM. 177 

talk to you, wishing you a thousand kind 
presents for the holidays, I must again exhort 
you to he in earnest. 

Love truth — love virtue — love God, and 
be happy. 



THE END 



31^77-1 



